Sustainable architecture should make the most of its environment, including the use of materials and energy. However, due to the clever use of stone and wood combined with an intelligent design, it is still functional and has a pleasant atmosphere.
The Venetian style of building is very specific to the environment. The beauty of this architecture results from a number of practical considerations, for example, how is it possible to achieve maximum lightness and robustness at the same time.
The foundations are invariably made of Istrian stone, a type of white marble that is relatively impermeable. Vivienne understood my growing conviction that Venice will only survive if it preserves its community. Every city must be taken care of by its inhabitants just as a home is looked after by the family. Venice is a microcosm of many global problems, which urgently need to be addressed worldwide. This means that every individual plays a significant role in generating sufficient pressure to effect changes.
Our work consists of creating an awareness of the perils threatening the future of the city and the stability of the lagoon, as well as suggesting possible solutions and taking specific actions.
Part of the series:. You live in an ancient palazzo. We eat it with breadsticks, descendants of the biscotto, the twice-baked everlasting ship's biscuits that kept a trading empire alive. The recipe for the biscuits, Ranieri tells me, was handed down from father to son until someone died suddenly at the end of the 18th century without passing it on. Francesco has already told me that in a supply was found in a bricked-up Venetian fortress in Crete and was perfectly edible.
Ranieri claims another stock was found in and was also quite tasty. For pudding, Francesco whips up some sgroppino from lemon ice cream, prosecco and a dash of vodka tip ingredients into a bowl and attack with a balloon whisk.
This half-drink, half-pudding takes its name from the word 'groppo' which means an indigestion-inspired lump in your throat. Happily and mildly drunkenly de-lumped, we take the boat across the creek to see Emiliano, who's given us the crabs. Improbably beautiful, he has a face from a Bellini painting, blond curls and fisherman's biceps. A friend of his, he tells me, married a girl from Norwich, but she left.
It wasn't to do with whether she liked Venice, he adds: either you're in love for life or you're not. By now I am ready to faint with romance. Emilio, as they call him, is working with his uncle Marco, sitting on the deck of a boat with sacks of crabs. They learnt everything there is to know about crabbing from Marco's father, Emilio's grandfather.
Not so many people collect the crabs today as it's so labour-intensive. Now they're separating out the females, which don't shed their shells.
This would take me several days, because the only slight difference is that the females are a bit fatter underneath. The female crabs mazzenette , are boiled for 15 minutes, and the flesh scooped out. The males go into wooden baskets and dangle in the water off the side of the boat until they're ready to shed their shells.
They must be checked twice a day: Emilio shows me some that have just shed and says if he doesn't take them out of the water, they'll absorb calcium and be hard by tomorrow morning.
I worry that they've got an enormous amount to sort - five sacks - but Emilio says this is nothing. Last week, when the weather was bad, they had The size of the catch depends on the moon the tides are stronger at full moon, meaning more crabs and the season. The male crabs shed their shells twice a year, in autumn and spring.
I ask Emilio if he likes his job, thinking perhaps I might consider a move to Burano to become a fisherwoman and sit on a deck all day sorting moeche in the sunshine. He looks at me sceptically. Emilio says no one cooks them like his mum, but a good way to eat them is in pastella, a kind of pancake mix. You throw the crabs in and they 'stuff themselves and suffocate', he explains, 'and then you have the eggy mixture inside and out.
The spikes disturb the sediment and the net catches whatever is lying in the mud, which is mostly stones. I can barely lift the pole, but Emilio says sometimes he does it for hours at a time. There is a Venetian saying, he adds, 'healthy like a fish'. Next morning, I leave the Hotel Cipriani quite reluctantly, because it's so fabulously luxurious and I'd really like to loiter by the pool and gaze across the water at the views a bit longer and take the hotel's speedboat-shuttle over to St Mark's Square.
From there it's a short walk over the Grand Canal to the Palazzo Baglioni. Francesco and I sit and talk in his vast book-lined studio. Francesco still isn't entirely sure how or why he is about to present his personal view of Venice on British television.
A BBC crew came to interview him for something else entirely, and then three months later a proposal arrived for a series of personal films on the history and architecture, character and future of Venice.
They must have identified him immediately as a natural presenter: unselfconscious, restlessly interested, vibrant, good-looking, and steeped in the city. He was born in Venice and grew up in this palazzo; he walked to school and university, where he studied to be an architect. You feel the past.
It can be damaging psychologically. Francesco describes his own fame as an accident. I thought he must be a top gambler to have gone beyond Monte Carlo and as far as Polynesia in pursuit of great winnings, but discovered that Bora Bora is also a very seedy bar near the Rialto. The turtle is still thriving today, but in a much bigger tank in our dining room.
The party assembled for lunch is a large one, consisting of eleven adults and ten children, but the da Mostos take it in their stride.
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