Venice Charter on Reconstruction

The VENICE CHARTER ON RECONSTRUCTION aims at the establishment of clear guidelines for post-war development. Though generated in response to the Syrian conflict, the charter aims to be useful in any other similar possible scenarios. The nature of modern conflicts challenges our understanding of conventional war: they manifest as permanent, asymmetric local and mobile wars between numerous transnational actors, and they extend beyond geographical boundaries. The Syrian case presents an example of how local conflicts involve the whole international community: epochal migrations, global terrorism and widespread violence affect globally every person regardless of any economic, social and religious boundaries.

We understand cities as places designed to offer the wider facilities for significant conversations. The word polis implies originally a double meaning: an urban settlement with its historic stratifications and evolutionary process but also the community of its inhabitants with their common heritage and future aspirations. The process of reconstruction of both implies, in a solid cosmopolitan view, a continuous shift between continuities and changes through a process of external contamination and internal discussion. The reconstruction of Syria implies not only interventions on cities, rural environments, archaeological sites and production networks,

but above all a transformation of society. We must tackle the profound wounds that are created by the conflict and imagine not only the shape and form of the future but also the complex social mechanisms involved in the process.

What is the role of the architect in this process? What action space must we build in order to make our voices heard? Today architects stand at the receiving end of the decision-making process. Legislators, financiers, military men and scientists are already being asked to give their opinion on the reshaping of the new post-war Syria, but architects and urban and city planners have hardly been consulted and remain on the margins of the plans. The VENICE CHARTER ON RECONSTRUCTION calls architects around the globe to act together as a transnational pressure group, to join forces in a creative process based on solid data analysis, wise use of available resources and socially responsible design solutions. Architects should become managers of natural and social resources assuming the burdensome task to both understand and improve the relationship between people and their environment.

In a postwar condition where physical destruction, economic devastation and broken social links endanger the very survival of cities and their community, contributing actively to shaping this environment is the task of architects and urban planners. Notwithstanding the importance of economic evaluations and the complex matrix of political interventions we must underline that architects possess unique skills relevant to the problem: the capacity to reshape the physical reality on the basis of the social necessities of the community while appropriately managing natural resources.

ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN PLANNING

Article 01, ROLE OF ARCHITECTS: The role of architects and planners should extend beyond providing design solutions working in cooperation with all interested professional figures. We call for architects and planners to be included in the decision-circles not only as consultants but as part of the urban and regional planning process. Architecture should take part in ‘rational’ management of problems, and challenging the dominance of economists and politicians in the global discourse.

Article 02, GRASSROOTS FACILITATOR: If architects are to take on greater responsibilities in global decision-making circles, then they must also take on a vital role in the initiation of grassroots planning and local initiatives. Socially conscious architecture gives spatial articulation to the pre-existing needs of a society, helping them to articulate half-expressed aspirations into an actual design program. These experiences allow to create the critical mass necessary to become a pressure group on larger decision-making entities. Within this level, architecture and urban planning act as device of mediation and enablement by providing socially conscious solutions.

Article 03, MASTERPLAN: Planners and architects should work with other specialists and experts within an overall strategy to identify, protect, preserve or rehabilitate what’s left, enrich the future, revitalize heritage and aim at a long-term sustainable development strategy. We believe that it is possible to mitigate the effects of war and encourage rethinking general strategies not to be strict and predetermined procedures but rather within a framework of open guidelines and methods. Uncertainty must be considered part of the nature and course of development, and tools such as micro-planning within a comprehensive framework enable sustainable solutions and self-cultivated development

PARTICIPATION

Article 04, LOCAL FIRST…: The society that has lived and experienced the war and its implications is both the center and aim of any developmental post-war actions. Hence, the integration and participation of society in decision-making at the early stages, is the foundation of any post-war reconstruction, key to the process and should not be considered a bestowed privilege.

Article 05, …THEN GLOBAL: Reconstruction is a global process that involves the main actors of today’s knowledge society: academic institutions, regional and international organizations, NGOs, public and private enterprises. All must coordinate actions and efforts in a timely way and must exchange information and ideas while gathering local needs and aspirations. We call for partnership with local institutions stressing the role of higher education and civil society as a tool of solidarity.

Article 06, SUM OF MICRONINTERVENTIONS: Participatory processes are based on the principle of empowerment, and must include a broad and balanced spectrum of participants of local and small-scale initiatives at the level of neighbourhood or building. Architects must facilitate micro interventions that show a cautious attitude and avoid the imposition of radical modernization agendas regarding governance, constructive systems and economics.

Article 07, COLLECTIVE MAPPING: Global collective efforts should contribute to a comprehensive mapping of territories stricken by conflicts and the strategies deployed in response to them. Open access to mapping data and to the maximum level of information will allow the full exploitation of design ideas, technical solutions, financial aid schemes and functioning of social processes. All the records of the documentation and intervention phases must be open to the public and made available through carefully edited online and book publications.

EMERGENCY RELIEF AND FINANCIAL AID

Article 08, EMERGENCY PLAN: The current concept of international aid operations cannot be guaranteed as a solution in the reconstruction operations. There are moments of relief and abundant outpouring of aid that are spent through several, and sometimes random, channels. Emergency planning actions usually leave the affected area without any future sustainable plans. In-depth study of the different stages of emergency must be prepared and each operation must be re-connected with the subsequent reconstruction periods.

Article 09, SHORT RELIEF: The relief period must be limited to the shortest possible timeframe. Relief plans should be reduced in favour of sustainable development during post-war reconstruction that can be extended to longer, multiple and interlacing development strategies. The financial and material effort necessary for catastrophe relief must be directed in a comprehensive logic that already envisions the necessary steps towards post-war development and the related risk assumptions. Recovery activities must be integrated with relief operations: humanitarian aid and development support are thus linked, bringing the earliest possible resumption of sustainable development to a troubled area.

Article 10, NOT ONLY MONEY: Post-war reconstruction plans must not abandon stricken areas to open market operations and indiscriminate speculative investments that have proved destructive in many previous post-war plans. Real estate speculation cannot guarantee any sustainable post-war reconstruction plan when it benefits and privileges specific segments of the society over the common good.

MIGRATIONS & DISPLACEMENT

Article 11, REFUGEE CAMPS: Conflicts lead to the augmentation of migrations that are already a key factor in the global discourse. Today migrations suspend the life of peoples: forcing them in life-threatening journeys or caging them in refugee camps. Refugee camps should be planned as new towns or settlements that can be used during the peace time by the community for other functions. The migration process must be considered as a resource, managing the displacement in order to minimize dangers and constructing institutions able to form specific abilities such as technical knowledge and social reconciliation. If refugee camps are considered affiliated to, and part of the cities of tomorrow, refugees should also be considered as new citizens contributing to the growth of these cities future. Civic and moral awareness in the studies and strategies of immigration, and integration of the refugees and displaced in near and distant countries are key factors for the success of a sustainable post-war reconstruction.

Article 12, EDUCATION: War results in the damage of the public infrastructure, the paralysis of the community, the disruption and suspension of education along with other institutions that secure the welfare of inhabitants and citizens in dispersed and afflicted communities. Schooling, irrespective of the teaching class form: in the absence of security or dedicated buildings, must be considered as a priority for children. Children forced out of their homes, living in shelters, temporary or estranged conditions, must be provided with education particularly through these difficult times in their life.

Article 13, LAW OF RETURN: The value of place crystallizes in the presence of its inhabitants as holders of its culture. Hence the preservation of heritage and culture is based on the return of residents to their neighbourhoods. Reconstruction plans should work beyond the geography of conflict and include strategies that involve neighbouring and refugee-hosting countries. Return strategies should begin where refugees are and not where they should return to.

Article 14, DIASPORA: Post-war reconstruction plans should include the possible and actual implications of the diaspora. Despite several innate challenges of identity and diversity, long-term and short-term diasporic relations have to be seen as an opportunity that can lead to the creation of transnational networks and to de-territorialisation of identities. Diasporic relations guarantee the conservation and broadening of the community, the implementation of financial possibilities and the construction of new knowledge and social networks. The constructive conflict between the inescapable locality of identity and the cosmopolitan attitude of diaspora must be carefully managed and exploited.

PROPERTIES

Article 15, PROPERTY: Post-war planning should prioritize and guarantee the rights of individuals and communities to live and work. The property rights of the returning refugees must be guaranteed through specific international legislations and in the case of large damaged areas the reconstruction process should be seen as a community driven, rather than an owner driven, process. Post-war reconstruction should be seen as a chance to face the huge problems of land ownership, that today represent one of the main obstacles to sustainable urban development, carefully guiding the process from a land-hold system to a land-lease one.

Article 16, GEOGRAPHIC REDISTRIBUTION: Post-war reconstruction should study the population distribution in proportion to the natural, social and energetic resources and to their original place of living before the war and ensure that reconstruction phases can provide conscious and detailed solutions in light of pre-war property and post-war sustainable development. The alteration of urban and large-scale density has to be considered as a possible development tool and always be carefully discussed through a process of community participation.

HERITAGE

Article 17, RIGHT TO HERITAGE: Urban heritage is not limited to buildings, it is made of a continuous urban texture, comprising contiguous buildings, access ways and free spaces between buildings. City centers, monuments and physical heritage must be preserved during the reconstruction process, together with the intangible heritage related to the value of human environment. When the surface buildings have been destroyed by war operations, underground traces of former buildings become accessible and form another level of urban heritage, to be explored through proper archaeological excavations. Therefore, post-war reconstruction is two-fold, related to building groups existing above ground, and to underground buildings uncovered by war destruction. Reconstruction must avoid the obliteration of past material heritage and social functions and become associated with the empowerment of the social, environmental and cultural aspects of heritage sites. The concept of cultural identity in today’s society is continuously shifting and adapting, and the reconstruction process should follow this contamination hybrid path between the necessity for memory and the adaptation to current uses.

Article 18, ARCHAEOLOGY: Whenever urban areas have been devastated, an archaeological survey is mandatory before reconstruction. If the survey identifies valuable past remnants, full archaeological excavations are needed, for a limited length of time (6 to 12 months, or more, depending upon the importance of the site). At the end of this period, the findings must be documented and topographically situated. An evaluation determines whether the remnants can be covered by reconstruction, transported elsewhere for conservation while the site is freed for reconstruction, maintained and conserved adequately in situ in the reconstructed area, or maintained and conserved as a monument, precluding any reconstruction on the spot. In this last case, the site is expropriated and public authorities pay the original owner a fair compensation. Alternative construction sites may be considered for his project. The local population is entitled to receive information about the collective value of the findings, the importance and benefits of tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

MANAGING RESOURCES

Article 19, ENERGY: Themes such as alternative energy production, water management and adaptation to climate change (that are today and will be tomorrow among the main causes of conflicts) must become the triggers of future development. The strategy must follow an evolutionary trajectory with clear aims in a timeline able to adapt to future changing conditions. While the initial goals will be devoted to emergency relief, the long-term objective will have to ensure a high quality of life based on the principle of sustainability and wise use, distribution and allocation of resources.

Article 20, DENSITY: The reconstruction process must be approached as an occasion to open opportunities for unexpected improvements. The evaluation of existent urban texture and its damage level is the trigger while the final aim should be an improvement in density that allows the whole city to reach the rich urban quality of the historical core while maximizing energy efficiency and minimizing waste.

Article 21, INFRASTRUCTURES: It is important to strive to rehabilitate basic physical infrastructure for facilities and activities, including health and education services, water and sanitation systems, roads, telecommunications facilities and irrigation systems. Modern industrial processes allow using waste as raw materials, transforming a huge problem into a key financial resource through the installation of transformation facilities able to empower inhabitants. We encourage the diversification and decentralization of infrastructural strategies trying to mitigate the effects of war in post-war planning.