From fantasy to reality: adaptive reuse for flour mills in Venice

Abstract

When designers are faced with interventions in abandoned industrial buildings, their imagination leads them, among other things, to spaces that, like a palimpsest, accumulate the stratigraphy of their history. This fantasy gives rise to different design solutions that will inevitably differ from one person to another, leading interventions in our industrial architectural heritage to become increasingly varied and complex. Reuse has been a constant in Venetian architecture. Churches, convents and religious buildings were turned into factories in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as was the case with the Stucky or the Passuello e Provera mills, symbols of the local flour industry. These mills, in addition to filling the space of old convents after these were shut down, filled the imagination of the designers and owners who tried to bring these buildings back to life. Finally, and after a period of neglect, they now have new uses. In this paper, and using the mills mentioned above as case studies, we intend to reflect on the life cycle of the two industrial buildings, and analyse the interventions aimed at their reuse, focusing on how the imagination of the designers gave rise to different solutions.