The issue arises from a question: how can logistics coexist with territories in rural areas? The landscape crossed by the SS434 motorway, which connects Verona and Rovigo, is under a deep transformation due to the settlement of numerous logistics mega-warehouses while the small municipalities are struggling to keep up with this huge transformation due to a weak regional planning policy. Logistics takes advantage of great infrastructural connections, low-cost lands and high unemployment rates of these areas while giving back very little. Aiming to enhance the relation between logistics and the landscape, the thesis defines four strategic objectives and develops them into three different design proposals along the motorway, seeing it as an attractor for multiple facilities. In order to cover the logistics spatial request until 2030, the three chosen sites host multiple programs: logistics needs have the same weight as environmental ones. The three locations are chosen according to different parameters and avoiding agricultural soil consumption. Given the urgency of the issue, the proposal avoids uncertain futuristic scenarios in order suggest already existing technological solutions whose combination keeps warehouses compact, meanwhile the other working facilities are designed to offer employees better working conditions. Various landscape interventions are implemented for each site contruction, all located along the territories crossed by the motorway, specifically in the compromised areas identified by the plan of intervention. This development method, combined with site focused ecological measures, aims to enhance the local landscape and offers a useful support to rural activities. A deep change in the logistics settlement model is more than urgent, overcoming current practices and proposing an integration with local needs and resources in order to enhance not only logistics itself but the territories in which it sets up.
Bibliography
- Frejlachová, K., et al. (2020). Steel Cities: The Architecture of Logistics in Central and Eastern Europe. PARK BOOKS.
- Belanger, P. (2016). Landscape as Infrastructure: A Base Primer. Routledge.
- AMO & Khoolaas, R. (2020) Countryside, A Report. Taschen.
