Social housing in Venice. The Giudecca housing estate by Gino Valle (1980-1986) and the challenges of change

In Venice in Italy, a multi-layered city with unique features, Gino Valle and Giorgio Macola built a social housing complex on Giudecca Island. It is a complex with a clear and compact shape, organised by transverse bands in harmony with the principle of development of the whole island. Rejecting the aggregative and typological schemes that the legislation of the time provided for public housing, Gino Valle designed a very rich range of typological variants with layouts based on three principles: individual access, vertical organisation of the homes around a courtyard (duplex and triplex units) and views over the lagoon. Module, type, grid, and repetition were design tools to generate a sophisticated and controlled system of variations with a “familiar” character to infuse the inhabitant with a deep sense of identification with the place. The paper seeks to bring out the importance of preserving the residential character of this social housing district within the social and economic dynamics on an urban scale of a city besieged by mass tourism leading to the depopulation of the lagoon and closure of commercial activities for residents, transforming the city into a sort of “amusement park”. While in the 1980s this neighbourhood was mainly populated by families, it is now made up of the elderly and single individuals, despite urban policies to favour young families. Unless controlled, they may lead to the transformation and even loss of an important masterpiece of Italian architecture of the late 20th century.