Stunning, never-constructed precedents from the Renaissance in Venice by Alvise Cornaro

Around the year 1560, patron of the arts Alvise Cornaro proposed using rubble and mud derived from the dredging of the Venice canals to construct an artificial garden island with a “vague little hill” in the San Marco Basin, close to the well-known Piazza San Marco . The proposal was not ultimately built. The project is a historical example of the use of discarded dredged materials for design purposes . The project also envisaged a fountain in the San Marco Square and a theater in water. A few years later, Cornaro combined this project (island, theater, and fountain) together with another one, which also remained unbuilt: a fortification with an embankment constructed with discarded dredged materials to be built in the waters around Venice, to provide defense, public green space, and a timber reserve. Also presented here is the plan drawn up by Cristoforo Sabbadino, Venice’s most important hydraulic engineer at the time, which was developed in the same period (1557) and also involved dredged materials. Cornaro’s projects are addressed here from a landscape perspective as important early examples of design uses of discarded fill to construct a garden and a “park.”