Venice City Vision Premise Our vision for the future Venice considers as highly strategic three points:-a new relationship between residents and lagoon,  -a new relationship between land and water,  -a new relationship between public space and housing. Venice – la Serenissima- was built with techniques that today no one would dare to use anymore and that sometimes frighten us, but in the past these techniques have given the possibility to more than 300,000 people to live on an artificial island in the middle of a lagoon. In fact we think that these techniques, that have generated one of the most charming and self-sufficient urban organisms in the world (for example the ways to collect rain water under the squares or to cultivate fresh food in the courtyards), are today inscrutable and impossible to imitate: the culture is different, our desires are different. View More

Like an imploding star that’s about to become a black hole, Venice is coming close to reaching it’s critical mass. Assuming that the number of visiting travellers is constantly increasing, soon there will not be enough Venice for them all.  The travel mecca of Venice needs to reach a new level. What could possibly match the awesomeness of Venice? Only the other most awesome tourist destinations of the world! What if you could see Venice, New York, Louvre and Rio de Janerio – all in one place? The World in Venice! A new parallel universe. Yet another reason to go to Venice! Why choose, when you can have it all! View More

sieving venice Yesterday Venice was a place of refuge for the inhabitants of Northeast Italy. The exceptional geographical context offered by the lagoon of Venice, approximately 50 km long and 15 km wide, is 551 km ² of an amphibian environment made by islands more or less sank by a brackish water, perfect to avoid the Lombard invasions, but however contains dangers like the mudding, due to a loose ground, and the destructive assault of the waves which threatened the constructions. To mitigate this problem, rivers flows were diverted and disciplined, three ways by which the tide rushes into the lagoon are ceaselessly fitted out, and the slender offshore bar was protected from fences and from moles. At the same time, the city of Venice extended gradually in any possible piece of land of the lagoon, by taking care every time to strengthen the load capacity of the ground by the use of stilts. View More

“gondola,gondola” Venice is a city characterized by two distinct features, each independently dictating the overall functionality of the city. One is constantly made aware of the canal as the fear of floods and rising water levels cannot be ignored. Open to the sky, one can escape the confusion of the road network upon entering a campo. Weaving throughout the city, the canal animates and nourishes life in Venice. Facilitating circulation, transportation and movement, the canal not only is highly functional, but truly defines the city as well. The dependence on the canal though, is equally a constant reminder of the threat of rising water levels – acqua alta. View More

If people were to choose a vision for their city, the result would be an endless number of urban marvels. Ideas to be collected in an archive, with citizens picking their favourite ones. Here comes the idea: an iPad app through which creating personal representations of Venice. The icons set on the graphic interface would allow to customize multiple fields. Architecture, Sky, Water and above all to insert devices and ideas for sustainability (“Eco”). By acting on the Architecture, users can add to the real landscape of Venice, what could-have-been-done. Wright’s façade, Le Corbusier’s hospital in Piazzale Roma, Kahn’s Congress Hall, plus other archistar-projects. Users could also include their own projects and also add trees, bushes, etc. View More

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“And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves” (Plato, The Republic, Book VII) Let’s hope that a major development in Venice would never be granted. The beauty of this city relies on every single detail that one can meet at every corner. One of the city’s most important issue is that it’s more and more consumed rather than lived. That’s why a massive urban plan is not the answer. However, architecture can overcome particular problems and enrich the diversity of the city. View More

Urban Constellation – Contemporary Metropolis. As is often becoming the case in many major European cities, Venice has been slowly dissolving into a ‘museum city’ status, based on rampant speculation, a rapidly aging population and exponential growth in tourism.  It is increasingly difficult for locals to afford the city’s high cost of living, or compete with the sheer volume of tourists which permeate the contemporary culture.  Much of this is attributed to the islands dimensional restrictions, which has limited the city’s ability to expand its commercial, logistic, and representative needs.  The surrounding lagoon, which once offered security from invading forces, has confined contemporary motorized travel and expansion of habitation options within a shallow, finite area. View More

Venice, an island in a lagoon, is one of the most visited cities of the world, in fact it has been reproduced abroad in 1:1 scale. It arose from the water thanks to human intelligence and became the centre of commercial and cultural trades. This important artistic and architectural heritage, joined with national and international cultural instances, led to famous film festival, art and architecture exhibitions. Its charm and sensations that it provides to people walking through canals, in addition to its rule in the history make Venice unique. View More

DIS-ORIENTIREENG VENICE […]No matter what you set out for as you leave the house here, you are bound to get lost in these long, coiling lanes and passageways that beguile you to see them through, to follow them to their elusive end, which usually hits water (…). On the map this city  (…) has no north, south, east, or west; the only direction it has is sideways. It surrounds you like frozen seaweed, and the more you dart and dash about trying to get your bearings, the more you get lost. The yellow arrow signs at intersections are not much help either, for they, too, curve. In fact, they don’t so much help you as kelp you. [1] View More

FAKE VENICE A vision is a forecast, a matter of planning or it is a fake. Today reality is much more strong of any possible forecast, as we have understood looking at the recent events all over the world. Starting from the 9/11 till the new internet guided revolutions in the north african arab countries and the strong earthquake happened in Japan that leaded to the tremendous tsunami and the nuclear accident, all of us have seen events all over the world we hardly believe in if they were set up in hollywood movies. View More

PROUD SCAPE If you want to build a ship, don‘t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. Antoine de Saint-ExupéryVenice the city of pride. Proud was the city. Rich was Venice, it was the centre of the world. How many traders sent ships from here to foreign countries? How much gold exchanged hands in all the market places, exchanged for silk, salt and ivory? The city was full of pride and it was told to the world, presented to everybody. The magnificent buildings, all on stilts built in to the sea. The might still present and felt in the old walls. How many Venetians died in wars fighting for the city? They ruled the Mediterranean Sea, proud seaman and clever traders; they build their houses on stilts in lagoons. Where has the pride gone? The Venetians leave their home behind, escaping to the main land, leaving their city unprotected. View More

The specific location of Venice has created the necessity to visualize many possibilities of intervention for the ecological management and protection towards the lagoon and the city. It is necessary to understand that the city is carried to the cultural and physical extremes, people are demanding it   characteristics did not initially conceived, in that way it seems today and imaginary of it was and not of it is. View More

The spirit of a community results from every gesture posed by all of its individuals and it’s through each individual that the architecture of a city is identified. The lifestyle of the people is transmitted through the structures by the union and the sharing of space but it is essentially by its environment that the individual is inspired. It’s not a question of adapting mankind to the condition of the environment, neither to force the environment to adapt to civilization. The goal is to confuse the architecture and the community with the natural cycle of earth, to take advantage of the natural phenomena and to harmonize it with the native rhythm. View More

Venice 2.0 The City in the 21st century Problems The contemporary city of Venice is a famous city. A city of imagination. A city that everybody should visit at least once in a lifetime. A city that welcomes 18 million tourists a year. A city with great institutions of art and knowledge. The city of the famous Biennale. The city of world famous buildings and architecture. That are most of the time the first things that comes to your mind when you think of Venice. Positive things about the city, through the eyes of a tourist. But there is actually a flip side to all this. There are several major problems in the city of today. Most of the problems directly affect the local population in the old city. View More

Nature acts as a major temporary art theater in which Venice plays the role of a protagonist, and spectators are part of this story by touring and witnessing how a big natural curtain (sky and sea) slowly closes, merging into one.
The proposed element highlights the water border that vertically divides the city into two parts: above and below it. It reveals the urban context by proposing an original dialogue, a new exhibition, an always existing museum in which Venice is inserted. It improves the connection between the city’s history, its present and future by promoting a critical evolution of its architectural historiography. By slowly navigating through Venice’s waters in its unique and special way, it exposes the city’s biggest phenomenon; its sinking. View More

Venice’s prevailing element is water; over the centuries the city developed thanks to the inventiveness of the Venetians, that allowed it to grow in an almost paradoxical habitat. Their tenacity produced a city that with time has become a world heritage site. By preserving more and more its historical and architectural heritage, Venice’s possibilities to upgrade in compliance with the citizens’ needs were probably compromised. The total musealization in which the city has been brought is today the main reason for the constant decrease of its population. View More

Suburban Archipelago: Semivisible Expansion/Co-Isolated Communities …nature and society are two perfectly happy bedfellows whose opposition is a farce. –Bruno Latour Yet, eighty percent of the population of Venice left – as we read – left towards the world of cars, highways, pollution, supermarkets, tall apartment buildings, that is, towards the “real life” – as lived today. And they left behind the dreamy Venice, abandoning her to the swarming tourists. –ICARCH Gallery,  “A House For Marinetti – In Venice” View More

V e n i c e: T h e f l o a t i n g C i t y Venice is surrounded by water; it is located within a lagoon and made up of 118 islands linked by 453 bridges. The bridges are a dominant feature in the city and provide visual interest, historical context and a poetic rhythm across the landscape. The city has one main Venetian public square, the Piazza San Marco; the remaining open spaces are small Campos surrounded by buildings that vary in size. View More

We as a nation is defined by our rich history, we understand who we are and how to move forward because of our past. We cannot watch something so significant  to who we are  to just slowly fade away or should we say sink in extinction and lose an important part of ourserlves. In our recent history, we cannot deny the power of  mother nature when she decides to use her power over us. All over the world, we are experiencing huricanes, floods, sink holes, earthquakes and tsunamis. If we are given a chance to save what we can and predict such natural phenomenon, we should seize it and make the most of it. Venice, one of the worlds’ most visited places on earth is now on the verge of being submerged in sea water. As early as now, efforts are being made to protect the city from descending. We are now here to contribute our constructive response to an impending phenomenon on this serious matter. View More

Venice is too beautiful to be entombed. In order to thrive as a contemporary city, we must stem the tide of enshrinement, we must encourage a productive lifestyle outside the tourist economy without destroying the fabric of the city.  Through intensive data analysis, we propose to increase native population density with careful intervention and to restore the lagoon ecology with new transportation, giving the world a new way to experience the city. View More

There are two main problems in Venice 1. The millions of tourist and the the problem therewith. Waste. Wastewater. 2. The city is sinking. 3. Not enough work. The inhabitants of Venice are moving to the land. 2. Is connected to the global warming To solve the problems is proposed that Venice is reinventing itself. a) City farming. Which will great working places and make the city self sufficient. b) Taking more risk in this museum city. Make a passive house city out of it. The dense structure is pretestinated for it. c) See the unique in the city structure – compact city with a human scale, everyplace is in a reachable distance, car-free, stelts, … – and export the ID to give impulses to meet the challenges given by global warming. View More

The core of this proposal is an attempt to remedy the failing infrastructure of venice. By the use of amphibious ielements hidden beneath the canals & buildings, the city is able to come back alive. the system is comprised of a primary stage of nitrogen ballasts, to hold the buildings up, waste & sewage treatment mechanisms, network databanks for information infrastructure, and an algae biofuel harvester to sequester the inherent energy in the lagoon ecology. View More

BACKGROUND Venice LOSING THE ORIGINAL It is still one of the most interesting and lovely places in the world. This sanctuary on a lagoon is virtually the same as it was six hundred years ago, which adds to the fascinating character. It is like a huge museum in which every piece of architecture inside is a fabulous exhibit. However, more and more Venetians are leaving the lagoon to settle in other towns. Bar and hotel owners now come from abroad while the town is losing its original inhabitants and becoming more and more globalized. Labor migrants from Asia welcome you and serve you Italian food. You are in Venice. But are you really in Venice? View More

SLIME MOLD ARCHITECTURE IN VENICE

Our analysis reveals that Venice is facing major issues such as population displacement, escalating living costs, and a dwindling availability of affordable local housing. This reflects the conflict between the local community of Venice and the influx of tourism as both are struggling to acquire valuable resources of space and commodities. The alarming statistics call for emergency measures to save the essence of Venice. View More

Venice^² Water and land, a dichotomy that goes to Venice and its Lagoon since the dawn of time. A combination that, to a certain period of history, man has observed and helped in maintaining its natural balance, but since 1970, because of reckless decisions, put in serious crisis. The lagoon is a dynamic entity subject to change shape each season, to open in gulfs or not a few decades. The continental processes, generated by Alpine rivers that flow through their carry a large amount of sediment, are contrasted by the marine, identified by the sea currents generated by strong winds from the southeast. View More

“There are perhaps two types of cities: those that through the years and the changes continue to give form to desire, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it” Due to the seemingly inevitable course of nature, it is likely that Venice would be submerged in water – a natural process, that could act as a catalyst  in the  emergence of modified urban typologies. Venice is freed from its clichés, and the tourist’s routine perception. As the mirrored city slowly becomes the city in the mirror, what is left is a mere projected image, embraced by empty water, reminiscence for the tourists. View More

Lao Tzu wrote in The Uses of Not, “Thirty spokes meet in the hub. Where the wheel isn’t is where it’s useful. Hollowed out, clay makes a pot. Where the pot’s not is where it’s useful. Cut doors and windows to make a room. Where the room isn’t, there’s room for you. So the profit in what is is in the use of what isn’t.” Gaps between worldly items, silences between activities, negative emptiness between positive spaces. View More

2011 june 27th Today, at university, I read about an architectural contest, something kind of “visionary”: a few architects attempted to interpretate Venice in a future not far away, and yet not that close either. I saw an odd project, where these architects thought about a Venice totally underwater… the lagoon was not there (!) and to see Piazza San Marco you had to move through strange underwater pipes, like those of Futurama by Matt Groening!! […] View More

Underwater Bridge Venetian Issue City of Venice boasts its remarkably rich and colorful cultural heritage. The city presents the visitors distinguished compilation of architecture, music, art, cuisine and festivals. The city’s unique sensation of water and unforgettable urban landscape still invokes the romantic sceneries of the European romanticism. View More

VENICE INSIDE VENICE, peace brought by separation Venice has become and is more becoming an undesirable city for residents to live. The main reasons given by the current habitants are mostly problems caused by the tremendous number of tourists visiting Venice every year. Approximately 20,000,000 people visit Venice every year. This is 340 times the number of residents. Venice has undoubtedly become a city centered toward tourists, with no consideration for the actual living residents. There is no arguing that Venice needs a definite change, allowing the residents to pursue a normal life just like people in other cities. View More

ROUTS SYNTHESIS NANO NET The main requests of the proposition are briefly summarized in the following points, GLOBALIZATION. Venice is globally known as a city of Architectural Masterpieces Patrimony. These masterpieces were built principally during the late Medieval and Renaissance period. The challenge of the proposition is the adoption of an innovative route that will connect these Historical masterpieces. TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATIONS. View More

Escaping from Las Vegas. Introduction. A Carnival mask. During  the last Century many masters of modern architecture have done projects for Venice. Those projects have never been built due to an ultra conservative vision, which has preserved the city, but at the same time has denied its true nature. Venice is still celebrating its past time. View More

Venice yin-yang city In less than two hundred years, by 2300, the human race will almost completely destroy the biosphere of the Earth. The ozone layer will disappear, constant storms, tornados, hurricanes and tsunamis will make the remaining land inadequate for human life. Due to the global warming, the ice-bergs of the polar seas will melt, causing the water level of the oceans to rise. Cities such as Venice, Amsterdam, London, Lisbon, Manhattan  or Bologna will partly or entirely be covered with water. The human race forced under water, holding on to its past and memories will take possession of the spaces and river-beds of its sunken cities. The definition of outside and inside, alive and dead city will exchange. The previously negative spaces of the former medieval, renaissance and baroque squares of Venice, the Grande Canal, and the waters surrounding the island are now filled with capsule-cities. The people, who live there, call these underwater colonies Jin-Jang cities, referring to the new harmony created under the pressure of nature. View More

Sinville Venice - the very hometown of passions.  Not long time ago, once a year, everyone was equal to each other, no matter how rich, ugly, man or woman he was. Behind a mask, everyone was  set free to express himself, to be the other, the inner, the desired. Under such ways of tolerance, between desire and equality, Venice has succeeded in keeping balances, in floating despite drowning. View More

Terra incognito_iv You can’t have similarities without difference and you can’t have difference without similarity –Claude Levi Strauss The greatest testament to this success is Venice itself, to this day the “most serene” city on earth.  And yes, it all started by chance, Venice is the result of a stochastic process which was brilliantly managed for a thousand years, but was initiated by pure luck, or rather… by God’s will, as the Venetians of old would be quick to add if they were here today.  It’s a city of “function followed form”. The insular nature of the original settlements favored the creation of autonomous fiefdoms in which the richer families. Because of the power structure business, religion comes to play a big role the city did not have a grand gesture for that might reflect a more democratic milieu in the making of a nation. Now the development or changes are more prone to politics. View More

P R O P  C I T Y Cityvisioin,  Venice is being flooded by a wave of tourists filling the city from all across the world.  Because of an increase in tourist population, Venetians are being driven from their homes by these temporary residents.  Houses are being converted to hotels and the local population cannot afford (nor wishes) to stay.  Not only flooded by tourism, Venice is also drowning in the very waters it derives its identity from.  Flooding has become a regular occurrence within the city, filling the streets and piazzas with water, regularly inundating its historical fabric.  These monuments must be lifted above the water’s reach. View More

“[Venice] Thus arranged on both sides of the channel, the houses were to thinkof natural places, but of a nature that had created their works with a human image.”Marcel ProustYet if we cross the history of Venice with the 900 would find the last greatwork of urban Le Corbusier, not a Khan’s Palace  Congress, a dream of reflection and the mosaic on the Gran Canal of Whright, but also the temporary utopias of Biennals Art and Architecture, Gugghenheim, Gran Canale paved by SuperStudio and Aldo Rossi’s Teatro del Mondo (a monumental that floats, such as subtle irony!), the sophisticated realism of the Valley with the ideology of urban Samonà, the architectural sheet metal and plastic with Gehry regionalism sophisticated Zucchi, fitness ideas and vision of IUAV with the acupuncture treatment of many internal Scarpa. Instead, today Venice is at risk ”extinction” means the complaint, the association “Venessia” that compares the risks they run the survival of this place with the collapse of the House of the Gladiators at Pompeii. View More

How much can you change without losing your identity? How much can a city change before it becomes a different kind of city? Venice has dramatically changed, filled with tourism and increasing high living costs. However, those are only the visible consequences of more radical changes in the livelihood of the islanders; the so called “Venetians”. These changes did not happened during the last decade, but they can be traced back to the first physical connections to mainland, namely the Railway line (1846) or “Ponte della Libertà” and the motorcar bridge (1931-1933) which paradoxically is what has Venice caught to its problems. View More

“Venice City Vision” allows us to propose how the future image of Venice may be constructed. Our proposal focuses on a single instance that acts as a model to how we can sensitively insert contemporary architectural practices into a strictly historic environment. We do not want another row of images, but we think that some of the history of the city can be retained, re-conceptualized, and integrated into a contemporary design of the city. Urban planning, at a large scale, in a city that is enchanted as so, by the mystery of its winding roads and rivers, can be confused as an attack on the nature of its character. View More

VISION: VERDE VENEZIA sees Venezia as one of most culturally and historically signicant cities in the world. How can change come to Venezia without compromising its grandeur and layers of culture? This project introduces a new layer to Venezia – a vegetative and productive layer. The Grand Canal acts as a spine that runs through Venezia, holding her together. At 3,800 meters long, and 30–90 meters wide, it is the most signicant water-trac corridor in the city. View More

The project “Venice hub” is about a visionary development for the City of Venice. It examines infrastructural concepts, large scale urban planning, architecture and transportation design, while always focusing on sustainable principles. The project is composed of two major parts:  1) a newly developed transportation system which improves the connection between the two parts of the city, “Centro Storico” and “Mestre” which are both undergoing extensive urban development 2) the central transport hub especially designed for this transportation system View More

A city further built upon preconceived notion through tales and images that frame it such that the illusions precede its reality. One can memorize the imprint, its systematic language; everything is done so that the city remains the same, interaction is lost. The inability to change, or rather, the desire to stay the same is what makes her forgettable.  Stubborn to modernization, to globalization, the mystical timelessness of its existence is the cause of its deterioration.  However, the decay wrought on the city is not grotesque but one of beauty and elegance, as for those who have entered the city know, that at certain hours, in certain places along the street, the hint of something unmistakable rare, perhaps magnificent comes to light. View More

Venice … The city becomes analogous to an organism, a living being, a man even, struggling with his identity and change over time … he must reconcile the old with the new, inevitable change with the desire for stability, moments of love with those of pain, the unforeseen with that which is to come … an inevitable conclusion, slowly building up … the line of the city, the line of the water, squaring off … sizing each other up, flirting a little in the process … the two will eventually converge … View More

Except of the ” Constitution of the Free Tourism Republic of Venices” , June 6, 2011 Regarding the disposition for the city formerly known as Venice ,Italy (45° 26′ 15″ N,  12° 20′ 9″ E) FREE TOURISM REPUBLIC OF VENICES FONDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES SECTION 1: S.T.Z. (SPECIAL TOURISM ZONE) Art. 1 Venices is a Republic, founded on tourism. It is organized in order to achieve the optimum coexistence of tourist and citizens. This coexistence has to work for the cultural and economic development of both of them. View More

Venice is a city known for its incredible and peculiar water system of transportation. The city seen from the top has a beautiful canal with wonderful curves, which are not possible to be seen at ground level by the human eye. So why not make another view of the city? Why not look at Venice from above? View More

The proposal highlights a socially and culturally opulent seam in Venice, which extends from San Angelo, San Marco, beyond the Accademia Bridge to San Agnese of Dosoduro. This area is characterised by inherently complex and dialectical relationships; public and private areas, and a mixed demographic of locals and tourists. Aside from the typical cultural buildings of Venice, the seam is interspersed by three major cultural sites, La Fenice, the Gallerie dell’ Accademia and Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e d’Arti which function as international institutions, all existing on a macro scale but with many aspects of their program separated or even completely independent from their surrounding cultural context. View More

THIRD DIMENSION VENICE To elevate Venice above its routines and its historic assets. To offer another vision of the city, rediscover and navigate it from a new dimension. An opportunity for Venice to renew itself, its flows, its perspectives and its geographical limits, while completely respecting and preserving its surfaces. Venice is a story of passions, and its destiny is necessarily steeped in controversy: a vestige to be rescued at all costs? A ruin to join Atlantis and history, forever lost to the water? Today, there is no zero-risk future for Venice in terms of the evolution of its ecosystem. And while its destiny may be inescapable, it remains possible to adapt the experience of Venice to a changing environment. View More

Venice is facing the problem of raising sea levels that causes the city to be flooded yearly. The, sometimes called, other “flood” of the tourist is being perceived in a similar way. These problems are problems that most of us are well aware of. But essentially they are technical problems, which have naturally a technical counterpart in the form of a solution. View More

hey… I would like to see the rivers today So… Why don’t we talking a trip on the gondola? I would like be nice… Sure! Oh.. Maybe we can spend the whole afternoon in the plaza afterwards…Life is so good to with these… Rivers. Gondolas. Plazas. What else can be in VENICE in the future? Global warming and Raised water level… UNDERWATER? Venetian should not leave their HOME easily even their homes are being flooded. So… Living underwater? Become marine organisms? How to maintain the social life? Where are the connections? Rivers are the original connections in Venice, together with minor pedestrian paths. People can travel from one place to another by these accesses. They can go to the shops to buy daily necessities. They can gather at the plaza to have fun. They can enjoy their amphibious life. When the original accesses are flooded, new accesses are needed. View More

What can architecture provide to a city like Venice, always fleeing from itself, in perpetual crisis of identity and with no unitary model of reference????????? The project investigates the dimension of the everyday and the real space, setting a micro sociological analysis aiming at finding balances. The aim is not to fill the space with the immobility of buildings, but to introduce new genetic codes enabling an endless evolution in the city. A city no longer made of boxes and cathedrals, but of experiences and information. A city made up of perceptions, sounds, emotions and colors. It is no longer made to be observed but experienced. It is made up of mental logics, psychological, inner, and abstract spaces.
We propose a mold and efficient architecture capable to dialogue with the territory. It is made of warm, flexible, reversible, and incomplete sub-sized housings. View More

“The works of nature are to those art” Charles Darwin on …The origin of species… The exercise described on our proposal centers its approach on recent developments established on the work of evolutionary biology, a field of science which main concern is the inter-action between the space environment and evolutionary development. Therefore, it is the combination of urban theories from renaissance and urban utopian thinkers from industrial revolution that the project draws its conceptual approach of providing a structured and equilibrated urban art-fact inserted with harmony into the nature as the need for supporting life becomes paramount.  Therefore, to reshape Venice with the intent of proposing a futuristic and utopian city where the beauty of family life may occur throughout it is necessary to: View More

IS VENICE A FISH?  NO, IT’S AN OCTOPUS CITY! In people’s imagination, Venice has always taken the shape of a fish, but instead it is a polycentric and multi-formed city that expands towards the sea: during the Serene Republic it was called a “sea state”, thus as a reminder of its unlimited borders. Recently, its urban identity has been flattened by concepts of bipolarity or  that of being a metropolitan city, but Venice is so much more. Its history has always portrayed it in different ways. Our City Vision of Venice is that of an octopus: Venice is not a fish but an octopus city! View More

This project explores the architectural occupation of residual urban spaces and their potential to transform conventional programs and activities. It is premised on the observation that Venice, Italy has organically formed over time through an extensive notion of accretion, producing unusual and provocative sites where architecture can be challenged to discover other modes of occupation. [Posturely] Challenged, is interested in how these awkward conditions might generate an awkward architecture, one where the exception challenges our conventional understandings of place and use. View More

Eidos. Venice 2757 Introduction A city where time has stopped, while the rest of the planet keeps on producing chaos; a city that oppresses its inhabitants with its hyper-identity and its business; a city which is absolutely inadequate in sustaining the lives of its citizens. This is Venice. And this could be considered its fate. Venice can be defined as a sort of huge “souvenir”, a “cultural-playground”, where reality is de-realized and every pathway, every image, every instant loses its meaning because of its repetitive dramatisation. This process is based on actions that develop through specific time and through such devices, as the digital camera, which typically belong to tourists. The time of the process of de-realization is “afterwards”, back home, when every picture will be shown to friends and families, bestowing a meaning “a posteriori” upon their “passage to Venice”. Thus, Venice has undergone a transformation into a long-performed product created by tourism. Venice has become a fiction. Everybody knows the image of Venice but what is the most meaningful one, the one that really represents it? Isn’t the repetitive and obsessive representation depriving the space of its meaning? View More

New York, Kennedy Airport, at the check-in queue. August:  “Where are you from?” Piero:  “I come from Venice!” August:  “Really? Do you live in the island? And what about rising water?” Piero:  “Actually I live in Mogliano, 15 km from Venice” Where does Venice finish? We know that it begins whit the main island, but where is the entrance of the city? Somebody talks about ‘Veneto city’, someone else about ‘Pa-Tre-Ve’ (Padova-Treviso-Venezia), we would like to start talking about the ‘city of the lagoon’. Venice is not only what’s inside the lagoon, but also what insists on it. Mestre and Marghera could be part of the ‘city of the lagoon’, but they have an extremely serious lack of relation with water! One day we were standing on the Marghera coastline and were looking towards East. That’s what we saw… View More

Proposal letter #1. Is Venice a city for tourists? Or is there a sense in Venice without tourists? We saw – The current flooding, And the residents about general fatigue are sick in the tourist, but Is fueled by tourism resources, – complexity in Venice. Many historians have been preserved in Venice. The past is history now. Then the current is the history of the future. So It’s history from the beginning of Venice until now being waterlogged inclusive. We recognize that the essence is Sinking Venice itself. So we buried him with all that history and culture. View More

New Hydrotropolis Venice (NHV) Vision In the past Venice is a city of hope. The success of Venice as a center of cultural activities is not aligned with the desire to live in. Venice is becoming archaic among youngster and has a tendency to become a Geriatric city. How to revive Venice, and brought thousands of young people to live in the city of Venice. And Venice became a city of hope for 22 century. View More

Il Paesaggio Produttivo dello Zattere Historically, the Zattere has operated as a productive seam within the urban grain of the city, a threshold between dense city fabric and open lagoon-scape and point of arrival or raw materials and goods feeding through the district of Dorsoduro and into the city. The influx of mass tourism and consumerism has slowly eroded this traditional landscape and infrastructure of merchants, small-scale craft industry and artisans who’s roles are steadily being replicated and imitated by foreign imports to the city, leading to a gradual decline of the once commercially important district of Dorsoduro. View More

Thus I was walking one day on the well-paved quay of that Neptunischen Stadt where to winged lions honors divine are paid . . . (J.W.Goethe). A small little boat is sailing over the flat surface of a quiet lagoon. Imagine to touch the water. Feel your body reacting to the endless movement of the waves; time doesn’t flow straight anymore. You are leaving the safety of the mainland entering into the realm of water. View More

…if Venice survives through reflection? “And if we are indeed partly synonymous with water, which is fully synonymous with time, then one’s sentiment toward this place improves the future, contributes to that Adriatic or Atlantic of time which stores our reflections for when we are long gone. Out of them, as out of frayed sepia pictures, time will perhaps be able to fashion, in a collage-like-manner, a version of the future better than it would be without them. This way one is Venetian by definition, because out there, in its equivalent of the Adriatic or Atlantic or Baltic, time –alias – water crochets or weaves our reflections – alias love for this place – into unrepeatable patterns…” View More

Concept. The main concept of this image describe the water flooding the city.I used the projector to record the tides change in different moment ,then use the video projection on the model, to express the idea of Water flooding. Water is the most important and serious issus in Venice.Shoreline is not just a border located in the boundary, not only links two different space.Shoreline in the Venice,it is an intangible, not a fixed shape, but can feeling that is a movement. On the other hand,I found out roof gardens are change Venice sky-line gradually. As general view, the movement of tides. it s the greatest strength, it was not just the main builder of the city, but also links to the history and present. Traces the history of the building,we can see those evidence around the whole city, There can not stop flooding and eroding. View More

Venice has always been an enchanting memorable place since it was built. It exhibits the capabilities of a man to reinvent and rephrase the way life has been and the entire vision of a city that has been prevailing at the period. At the same time the importance of the prevailing movement of art was never ignored but implemented with the city growth. Such a place with intermixing of cultures, technological developments has always been a place of mystery for the mankind; a mysterious place that leaves memories that one can ever replace. View More

Throughout its history, Venice has transformed itself and produced an unique potential which is nowadays being threatened by the consequences of global warming. The lagoon, fed by salt water through its three gateways, and fresh water coming from the continent, has a rich ecosystem. On the other hand, the maritime industry and local crafts ensure economic stability. Imagine floating above Venice. Suspended in the air, one becomes aware of the compact nature of a history and a future that are still raw. For the lagon has the marvellous ability to contain time : the grand, the tragic, the theatrical picturesque landscape. This is why Venice fascinates us, it tells of the world, and more than ever, it is the récipient of distracting temporality, which through crisis and contradiction forces us to imagine the future. View More

Venezia euthanasia Venice is a paradox. The city was created on the most hostile environment initially to protect itself by its enemies but gradually turned its autism to complete openness and elegance. Venice’s paradoxical nature allowed itself to emerge and flourish and at the same time remained in constant state of a protection. Venice is decaying. The equilibrium in the Laguna region is extremely sensitive. People’s ambition to manipulate nature is transforming what used to be a defensive operation to an attacking alert. The slow rise of the water level mainly caused by the numerous human interventions on the Laguna region is flooding the city. If the rise of water level continues, Venice will be completely sunk in the next few centuries. What should be a preservation strategy for Venice? Can we afford loosing this unique place? View More

HOP___ horizons operating parallel “A space comes into being when you link vectors of direction, variables of speed, and the variability of time. Space is a mesh of moving elements. It is full of the entirety of movements, as it were, that manifest themselves in it. It is, then, a result of activities (…). It is performed as an act of a presence (or a time) and changed through the transformation that results from the successive contexts. Unlike the place, then, there is neither the unambiguity nor the stability of something “own”. Hence, as a whole, space is a place with which we do something”. View More

BACKGROUND Venice is a city that has existed as the product of the rituals of daily life. Human power and manual labor have been and continue to be the important source of energy for the city, and most of the movement of goods and services continue to happen at the body scale (carts, small boats, buckets). The once great Venice of the 14th and 15th centuries has gone into deep decline (and may never be so dominant again), and modern efforts to revive the city have failed. The petrochemical plant at Porto Marghera briefly augmented the economy of Venice and Mestre, yet brought great environmental damage to the lagoon and contributed to the subsidence of the city. Tourism provides the economic base of the current economy, but it arguably destroys as much as it supports. View More

VENICE TERMINAL The Project is rethinking the arrival of visitors and commuters in Venice, which generate a second Population of the City every day. Located at the land entrance point of the city, this multimodal terminal forms a new bridgehead for Ponte della Liberta and extends the public space of Venice with its road and canal network, while simultaneously turning in on itself to create a flexible and complex urban environment which generates a gradient between the logistic island and the historic center, a transition between the present and past. View More

With the words taken from the competition it is born the idea to plan a bicycle path along the Grand Canal crossing. The bicycle path winds along the north canal bank and it is built through reinforced concrete piles come out of water .At the borders of them there are some spheres from which some metallic sections start to support the main structure. The bicycle path is made by two steel structures with 9,96 m of length ,one concave and the other one convex, all that it is to have the feeling of travelling over waves. View More

La Serenissima . . . ? La Serenissima . . . perhaps for visitors but no longer for Venetians. Can the balance between the residents and tourists be restored before it’s too late? City, Museum or Theme Park? For over 800 years Venice has been a place to visit: the city has record of official tour guides as early as 1204. By the mid 17th century the city’s economic prowess through trade and manufacturing began to slip away and the Venetians began to rely on tourism, using the beauty and uniqueness of their city to attract visitors from around the world. View More

Is Venice truly a city of water? The Venice’s relationship with water which began from the late 6th century, passed through Grand Canal during the construction of the Piazza San Marco and Basilica in the 13th century, slipped along the heyday of the republic during 14th to 15th century, trickling down the modern and present days and yet never was it really successful at even achieving a mutual communication until today. View More

“(…) sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices’ accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one.” Italo Calvino Cities & Memory 5, Invisible Cities View More

La Fenice Venecia Preamble The city is old, broken and gets sold, part by part, to foreign persons. The inhabitants of the city move away and only empty old houses are left. To keep the city up, a lot of money is needed. Tourism which brings money into the city is blessing and bane at the same time. There are no Venice people in Venice, only tourists. It has become a huge Disneyland for grownups. You want to visit Venice? Why? Just visit Google earth and you are able to see the whole city. It will be the cheapest journey you are ever going to make! View More

“… they held her, they anchored her, and she was not free to enjoy her life, her freedom. She was always playing the role of a polite girl, who does not rebel, the one that allows anyone to treat her as they like … ” Here we are, Venice shows off so to us, like a beautiful girl overwhelmed by the duties and customs, which is no longer free to enjoy her life. View More

ecological games without end Venice is intrinsically bound to the ecological processes of its site, the Lagoon. Our proposal extends the geography of Venice, conceptualizing the city as a nexus within the Lagoon’s complex, threatened territory. In reading the Lagoon as a series of relationships, the proposed intervention takes the form of principles for operating architecturally within the landscape at multiple scales – new rules for Venice’s ecological game without end. View More

Venice stripped The proposal looks at Venice and its territory. Venice is as an artefact, a pearl of urbanity floating between the Lido di Venezia and Porto Marghera, as if about to escape to the Mediterranean Sea. Its link to the continent, more specifically to Mestre and Marghera, is tenuous and made through Ponte Della Libertà which bisects these areas. Beyond, the territory is marked by agricultural land that pixelates the landscape and organises it. Venice has historically avoided physical link to the land, mostly for military reasons, and developed itself as a centrality on its own right. The duality between the need to protect itself and the need to trade is at the core of Venice’s historical development and reflects its problematic and paradoxical relationship with the terra firme. View More

VENICE NEXT LEVEL Report Situation Venice is struggling with the human caused pollution of it’s lagoon. The quality of living is dramatically decreasing. Interactions in the ecological system are becoming a huge problem for the sensible network of nature and city. Almost every year, a raising number of floods (aqua alta) can be witnessed. The city is facing it’s decline. View More

Urban Pegs Pegs are a strategy for locking in to an existing condition, responding to qualities of a site with reactive fragments which create new tectonic qualities through actions such as clamp, suspend, pinch, pull, wedge, embed, compress, screw. The Peg as a moment in a line or path within a territory has been tested firstly as a series of individual interventions and secondly as a wider urban strategy for Venice. View More

New Venice, New World: The unabating tide rushes for the City of Venice, the issue of flooding affects the people every day, as global warming gets worse the tide comes sooner and stays for longer year on year. Soon the City will be submerged. The reports that say that the City is sinking is also of concern. To what degree, we are unsure. To re-invent Venice and to inject new blood into her veins will need creation beyond what people think could save her. The fact that creation will be taking place perhaps overshadows re-invention. The creation will require a sensitive romantic view on the matter, taking the history and architectural heritage into consideration. There is a way to create a New Venice without destroying the grace the Old City exhibits, allowing the Old City to be almost embalmed in a new coat of youth and excitement. The tides would be dealt with as they have been for centuries, by barocading the Old City within a wall. The system would employ the use of locks to control the levels of the water on both sides. Locks would be positioned strategically to ensure that all sides of the city are equally accessible. View More

A new way of living in Venice This concept is basing on the sensitive topic in Venice—the boat. Boats play the key role to the rise and fall of the whole Venice. From the original boats like gondola to the warship which was dominated once in the world, and now change to the cruiseship. The new city plan is basing on the cruise ship. Now the cruise ship like a lung brings visitors from all over the world every day which makes fresh air to that ancient city. However, if the ship crash into the city, what can happen? I tested different ways when the cruise ship Queen Mary which goes along with Venice went into Venice, and then picked up the most sensitive part– Arsenale, which was the most famous boat factory. View More

ambiguous ^algaepark “Venice is born from the sea; at the same time venice is a wonderful expression of human creativity. although it is committed to the water it is a product of human fantasy, inventiveness and determinedness. venice is the utmost expression of our capabilities and vulnerability.” (mayor massimo cacciari). Although founded on unstable ground, the culture of venice was always embracing nature and the sea. the predominant cultural ritual is the city’s annual espousal with the sea. the traditional ceremony represents an understanding of treating the water in harmony and respect instead of dominating and forcing it. venice, so blessed in being without vehicles and roads, is an immediate, tactile event. walking along a canal, one its smells and feels the sunshine reflected by the lapping water. in a tight alley the dampness of the stone is palpable, and hands stretched out can touch both walls. when you reach the campo at the other end, the sky lifts, the air lightens and spirits expand up and out. the endless stairways are internalized by knees and calves, and the curve of a bridge is a kinesthetic delight, not just a visual one. in this way venice enters the body and becomes a physical experience. View More

Thinking about Venice, the first detail that comes to my mind is the typical GONDOLA. Gondola has been one of the main means of transportation in Venice over the last 500 years. Today, there are approximately two hundred Gondola navigating the canals of Venice and they look very different if compared to those used in the past. So i wanted to continue the way of evolution.. I was thinking about to adapt the waterway transport system to the climatic change and degradation of the water resources in Venice. This way of thinking brought me to the idea to mutate the gondola in a multifunctional boat. My “Floating Shell” make balance between the human actions and the respect of environment. View More

NEW BRIDGES FOR VENICE // Venice, a city whose historical progression and settlement has been defined by mediating between water and land, city and sea, has been aided by the role of the bridge. But, Venice has become a static city, frozen in time as a relic for tourism. Venetians both economically rely on and rhythmically avoid the tide of tourists. The center of the city becomes clogged with the stop and go of tourism instead of the flow of life. Deterred by high living costs brought on by luxury hotels and second homes, the remaining Venetians are forced to the outskirts of their own city and ultimately onto the mainland.  The proposal gives the bridge back to the Venetian as a communal programmatic asset that moves through the city in the same language as the native Venetian. View More

When  thinking about  Venice, the first thing that crosses our mind is  water. With this preliminary remark I am starting  a conceptual and technological quest for a new architectural language of Venice, which would adhere to the Venice Strategic Plan. Having conducted several analyses, I placed this new city landmark, the Tourism Promotion Museum, near the isle of S.Fisola. Inspired by the fluid dynamics studies, I crystallized an idea of a glass curtain-wall building emerging through water surface. Challenged by „Acqua alta“, a frequent sea level rise, I paid particular attention in my studies to the building sections  where the glass curtain wall meets sea surface. View More

Nemesis: the city of Venice is nowadays one of the global capitals of  culture, a reference worldwide given by the role it played as a gate between east and west.  The significance that the city had in different centuries has greatly changed throughout history: starting as a market and trade center, Venice built itself metaphorically and literally with the stones stolen from Aquileia, Rome, Alexandria, Acri, Costantinople. This long process marked a unique identity made by the relations between those pieces, those stories, that turned an insular village into the most prosperous trade center in the Mediterranean and then into one of the most fascinating cities in the world. As the ancient Venetian merchants today millions of tourists visit the city remaining enchanted by the stones of Venice with the secret wish of bringing home just a small piece of them. The plastic gondolas populating the domestic landscape of the houses worldwide are the contemporary transposition of the golden horses on San Marco’s facade stolen from the circus of Constantinople to symbolically achieve the greatness of the emperors. Venice is now undergoing the same process that  for centuries has shaped its own image. View More

How can change the nature of the city of Venice in the coming decades? Theme with multiple complications, we are in Venice one of the most special and unique cities in the world that has refused repeatedly to accept change. Venice, the old city with a stream of tourists about 50.000/day, scares the people oppressed by the constant flow of people that make difficoult the acts of common life. We remember that in Venice the common means of transport are your legs that lead us through the streets, bridges and squares where time stands still more than 200 years ago. How to approach solving this question? Everything that came to mind bordering on utopia, but Venice was an utopia before it had been made, then the solution was clearly an utopia! Another thing was spinning in my head, a definition recently read in the Naturistic book, saying something like “change, transformation,” the amoeba feeds on substances dissolved in the liquid in which living organisms or by incorporating smaller ” . View More

the cloud + the fog The cloud + the fog responds to Venice as a petrified city forced into stasis by foreign expectation for historical authenticity. Venice is a city sensationalized and repressed. It sinks under the weight of its historical past: time is stagnant here. Only people pass.  Venice demands a relief from this ossification and a reorientation towards the dynamism it is denied. Venice longs for sublimation. View More

VENICE QUEEN For centuries there was only one way to tell the story of Venice- a tale of a poetic structure, always the same despite constant changes, a magical city arising from the ocean, beautiful and ugly in its defiance to time. A story as wonderful as this one deserves many more telling, but now maybe with a new chapter. Carefully written. View More

The Cloud of Venice The proposal of city cloud is derived from a mapping project of Venice, we recreated the city into a set of languages of deep seams, this beautiful combination of narrow gaps constitutes our future research; another point that attracts us is the tidal change in Venice, how does water occupy the gaps and leaks out through time. We focus on the movement of the cloud cutting through the city while creating extraordinary gaping spaces. In doing so, we start to answer the question of how to make a cluster of cloud, and that includes not only our ambitions of a floating city, but also realistic concerns. Therefore the priority of the semester is to examine the architectural character of the cloud’s weight, thickness, permeability and accessibility in between both the existing city and the proposed city. View More

Terra Nova: building a new Venetian ground Project Statement: Venice symbolizes the strange beauty that is possible when human habitation adapts itself to extreme environmental surroundings. Sea level rise and climate change place the Venetian lagoon at a critical juncture in its existence and necessitate new techniques of adaptation. Terra Nova proposes a new, more flexible set of methods to build ground, improve biodiversity, and permit human access to this critical process in order to allow this very unique city and ecosystem to survive. View More

VENICE-ARCHIPELAGO “Venice is not that the beauty ambiguous of the adventure,” Simmel writes in the nineteenth century, expressing a romantic idea, blurred vision, that has not reflected in earlier writings, in the Venice “Sumptuous” of the Sansovino and of the Aretino, showing the sign of its decline today. The project starts with three basic issues • the physical elimination of the car bridge (1937) with the expansion of public transport by water bus, subway, bicycle and green landscape. • the protection of cultural resources of the lagoon, the “dead lagoon” in particular, with the elimination of conflicts caused by the port and fishing by moving the port traffic out of the lagoon and stopping the damage caused by fishing. • construction thinning with elimination and replacement of “betrayal” operated in the urban and architectural contest, connected with the project of urban requalification of the front of fondamente nuove/ Arsenal. View More

Venice is facing the problem of sinking into the sea. If it really happens, Venice will be vanished off without leaving anything behind. The heritage will also disappear with the land. What we can do, is to set up a museum and to tell the future generations that Venice once existed. However, is it the most that we can do with it? View More

VENICE MADE EASY REACHING-LEAVING VENICE After project MOSE failed and water levels rose in the Laguna, means of transportation evolved. Prohibition of motor boats and water level variations make it difficult to travel on water. Once you have arrived in the area of Venice with an airship, or by a sailing ship, you can take one of the different cable car lines that allow you to get from the mainland to the islands and to quickly reach your residence while overlooking the Laguna from one of the legendary Vaporettos that once circulated on water ! From the cable car stations, or close to them, you will find different means of transportation to continue your journey through the neighbourhood. View More

A sustainable future – CityVision Venice Venice is not an island. Today we need a system of improvement for Venice that concerns the issues of the entire territory of the lagoon. We need a regional plan of strategies for a new model of a city without boundaries. The planning method will change. The architect has to keep up with the complexity of large-scale issues. He thus becomes a designer of adaptive processes. View More

SERENISSIMA THE ETERNAL CITY? Due to faster than expected sea level rise, scientists project that even the drastic intervention of the M.O.S.E. sea barrier project will only delay the permanent flooding of Venice by 100 to 200 years. In this future vision of drastically altered climate conditions, coastal cities such as Venice will have to physically and economically reinvent themselves in order to survive. View More

Every City has its Dream. City Dream Cruises Holidays won’t be the same any longer. Exasperated by snatchers on holidays? Bored of beautiful yet dead old cities? Fed up by annoying street vendors following you everywhere you go? Tired of walking under the hot Italian sun? Discomforted by the insane medieval landscapes? Bored of dirty beaches? Feeling unsafe touring around old cities? City dreams cruises listens to your complaints. We care. It’s time for you to enjoy the pleasure of history within the tranquility and safety that we guarantee. View More

“Far from time and far from this world, disconnected. Static and eternal, Venice should be respected until it is no longer possible. Noli me tangere it says.” Bruno Barilli Art and creativity can heal Venice, which is in environmental decline, but not dead. The city of art, the most beloved city in the world for its history and beauty. A magic theatre where people also exist in reality. Without touching its past -“noli me tangere” – we will connect it to the present and future, keeping intact the history which is the city’s pedestal . View More

EPITAPH FOR THE POSTHUMOUS VENICE AGONY Venice is not dead yet and it’s living only partially. There are few inhabitants, they walk alone the calli; many have already chosen the dry land, abandoning “The Stones of Venice” to the contemporary tourist who is hungry for pictures: the old Grand Tour traveller, enamoured by the stratification of the city built on the water turned into a lazy -and kind of careless-cruise passenger. Inside the body of this city, through the veins of its canals, behind the turned off windows, in the shady campielli, there is no more frenzied business by working people, no more fierceness of the political speeches, no more grace of the young lovers, no more footfall by the old men, no more mothers calling for their children playing in the streets. View More

Drifted Vessel Venice City Vision Competition ESALA The urban strategy of these proposals envisions the development of a productive landscape, suspended within a strategically flooded area adjacent to the ‘Università Iuav di Venezia.’ The landscape is a ‘Drifted Vessel’ the form of which has been derived from the mapping of the rise and fall of the city’s waters over the course of a year. It consists of twelve strands that have become integrated into a critically flooded area of the city to form a new constructed terrain. This terrain contains programmes that serve the University and its surrounding neighbourhood. In doing so it engages with the vast numbers of migratory students (around 18,000 daily) that enter and leave the city on a daily basis. It offers an alternative to this constant flow – facilities that would allowing temporary inhabitation and stop overs to suit the various demands of the academic timetables. The ‘Drifted Vessel’ is envisaged as a productive landscape that involves the student, the resident, the tourist and the visiting academic. Its inclusion into the urban fabric will encourage dialogue between the diverse social demographic of the neighbourhood. View More

Recover and improve Venice´s inner life, going beyond the turism and attracting new inhabitants to live in it, it´s not something an artistic installation, conceptual proposal or even a good common building, can achieve. That´s why this proposal has its main interest in a serious intervention which can solve or begining to solve Venice´s inhabitants problem. View More

History tells us of persons with a vision of the world anticipating what it would have been even centuries later: think to Leonardo drawing machines realized only in the 19^th century… We study architects’ projects visualizing solutions so advanced for their time that, often, have been discharged as ‘impossible’ or of ‘no interest’. Other have been realized, and now we can have the pleasure of admiring the results of innovative minds and open-minded decision makers (the history of the Venetian Republic is full of examples of this fortunate combination that has produced architectural solutions due to last for centuries…). View More

With cities, it is as with dreams: “Everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear.  Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities View More

Venice lost, and won The concept is the imaging of Venice when freed from the indoctrination of historical sacrosanctity, allowing the re-emergence of a city in its origins; a refuge. Floret isles drift above the waters as though in celestial pollination. They rise, lifting free from the constraints of a perverse conservation; the attempt of preserving a false youth. The dwellers are on a journey, like the weary sojourner who first found refuge in the wet marshlands, to leave behind a home of forgotten origins. View More

Venice: connections among Water, Earth and Sky. After an historical-territorial analysis of the city of Venice, the extreme part of Giudecca isle has been found as the main area of intervention that comes out on the basin of San Marco. Such a choice was determined by the fact that this area,  in my opinion, is a focal point of the city, with various buildings of monumental relevance that look onto the lagoon. View More

Global Methodology. Probeta. ¿Who would think the globalization is a new phenomenon?
To only those that are used to live in the center of the antique imperial powers. To everyone else [us and you] from the periphery, the globalization is not a newness. From the periphery, from the antique colonies, history has never ceased to be globalization. “Telegram from nowhere” Mckenzie Wark. View More

Our ancestors used to name Venice as dying city[...]. Desertification is the degradation of land in arid: in the early 21th century entire Mediterranean area was involved in this change. The place was called Venice change between wonderful city built on water and fascinating ruins suppressed by sand dunes. Water, masks, bridges, boats, canals and all over around became sand. Sand on water ever and ever to kill the Lagoon. The wonderful lagoon, known as one of the most touristic place in the world, marmalade for traveller flies, gradually degraded in dry land and actually is a peripheral part of the largest north Saharan desert. [...]. View More

description an invitation for the Venetians | a draft strategy for bottom-up design of extraordinary spaces for ordinary and everyday activities in Venice the life in Venice, Der Tod in Venedig … yes, but, we seek la vita a Venezia all too often, calls to design for Venice, various initiatives (not unlike the Venice City Vision Architecture Competition) become exercises in designing more attractions for the visitors of Venice, for the hordes of tourists (which we all some fake Carnevale … “I was there”, “I  Venice” T shirts … ever more ideas for ever more tourists, to feed the mass (tourism); new packaging for a beautiful city to be consumed, to spice-up Coca Colonialism; designing (for) egos we refuse to partake in those games of overexcitement
this work celebrates ordinary,  everyday lives of Venetians …  le vite Veneziane, le vite vere View More

Venezia la belezza eterna What is City? To answer this question is hardly possible, because each human being perceives its surrounding in another way. Our sentiments and doings define the city, which means we are the city. In any discussion about the renewal of Venice and sustainable solutions for the future, we do not have to think about the foundations of the city or unknown algae plantations in the water. We have to make ourselves aware, that each of our actions causes a reaction. If we go by boat through the canals, we provide a faster decay of the city. If we buy a drawing of a street artist, then we are the reason why he works at the same place tomorrow. View More

Modules for Venice everyday’s life Project description Architecture is not something that one can choose to engage with or not; it is part of our daily life since we are born and have a massive influence on who we are and how we perceive reality. Defining the historic environment is particularly difficult because it implies personal and subjective factors, which are quite difficult to assess. View More

Productive transitory states of new Venice. The Venice Lagoon is a place where sea and land, as well as cultural forces, are in constant negotiation. It is a city that has always been on the edge, in a transitory state. The innovative experimentation and exploration have always defined Serenissima Republic of Venice. Nowadays, the city is gradually turning into a place completely dependent on visitors, and slowly transforming further away from being a legacy town on the edge, into a tourist’s Disneyland. The city is taking advantage of its historical legacy with virtually no productive economy. There has been a huge shift toward a service- and visitor-oriented economy that has forced most of the local population to relocate to the mainland. The city is sinking due to two processes: subsidence and marinisation. Venice is close to a saturation point and city authorities are trying to control both socio-cultural dynamics and the lagoon through top-down control modes which results in the creation of partially-closed systems. This approach to the constantly changing conditions of the Venetian estuary may lead to stagnation and collapse. View More

Alone! Alone! No beacon, far or near! No chart, no compass, and no anchor stay! Ada Cambridge Venice, disguised under the mask of vibrancy and dynamics, has been left alone in the dark, distanced from the dry lands. Drowned, by the water and sadness from within. From the vanishing population to the fear of Venice turning into a themed park, things that are left behind include decaying architecture, stores filled with souvenirs yet lack of soul and senses and thousands of tourists who flooded the city daily. Only light and spirit of the true Venetians can carry her out from the dark to the present and the future, both of which Venice longs for. View More

We can’t against nature-Sinking of venice. We want resource to protect our monument-crowed of  Tourists. We want  the life belong to us. All we want is a new life in venice. Until venice disappear. Venice is a dreamland since hundred years ago, now the venetian have the right to dream, dreaming a  big dream. View More

A MIRROR CUBE FOR VENICE “The Monolith Arlecchino” A mirror for a city that cannot be contaminated. A diffuse object, mimetic and apparently indifferent, an almost non-architecture from which to observe the city, document the city, exhibit the city, interrogate the city in a continuous dialogue … View More

The told stories of how the history has been embedded in the old churches, the continuing generations of gondola makers, and the arts that had been created in the heart of Venice undoubtedly illustrate the richness of the Venezia.  Gliding on the surface of the sea with the Venetian song being heard in the background, Venice has been known for the romance and the spirit of arts. In the core of this place is the sea, the water. View More

What sustainability? NO to sustainable schizophrenia: which denounces and encourages the system
An action from within, from those who are really concerned.
From local to local “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed” Simple solution, efficient and immediate Refuse to use prostheses or lures high-tech Aerials are already there: out of function and unused Science and technology are not always the solutions. What city? A city in relation to its resources, dimensions and traditions. Refusal of competitiveness, attractiveness and territorial marketing. A city that lives in the right balance
From passive to active View More

REBORN IN VENICE Venice is known worldwide for its unique and morphological character, as a city with a particular way of transportation and where History is written in every corner. Although the Renaissance is associated with Florence there have been new historiography studies that defend Venice as the base of the modern era. Historians now argue that the vibrancy of early modern culture also resulted from the development of capitalism and markets, increased cross-cultural interaction, and the process of state building. When one views Renaissance under this light, Venice takes on a new importance in the early modern world. View More

“Architecture is nothing, if it is not linked to its country, its beauty and its problems“ Oscar Niemeyer Between 2000 – 2005… The Venetian government decided to plan the “tracciato della sublagunare“ – a metro for Venice. But Venice is the „city of water“ and more than 50.000 tourists per day want to experience the town and its unique canals by gondola or vaporetto. People want to visit Venice on the water, not underneath it… View More

Rising sea levels caused by global warming could lead to a complex future for Venice Some climatological studies provide more frequent floods, almost daily. Probably thinking only to protect the city with artificial banks is inadequate to seriously limit the level of high water, we must start thinking of something else. View More

Promises Written on Water

Venice, the most magically city to able to see in the world. Located on the sea with magnificent buildings and this beautiful city is unaffected from the centuries that have passed by. Venice has been known as the “La Dominante”, “Serenissima”, “Queen of the Adriatic”, “City of Water”, “City of Masks”, “City of Bridges”, “The Floating City” and “City of Canals”… View More

Venice is motionless, static. Venice is a natural element; an earth and water shaped sculpture. Venice is a postcard Venice is alive an dead at the same time. Venice is a creature that needs to evolve, to leave her old vestigial structures. Venice is now perfect and unfit. A stong heat, an explosive strenght, press the heart of Venice push her to go beyond. The water became vapour and lightly flyes. The Earth try to hold her down. A new dimension creates a new evolutive space. The future force his way trough the perfection and revitalizes the city. Rings of past soar over Venice sky, witheld by thin wires that simultaneously link an free them. View More

The lion and the whale: “Love is gone! During a quiet midnight, where they were floating together as usual from centuries. They decided to leave even before the sunrise! Over the Adriatic Sea a fateful conversation took place between the leaving whale and lion, while the good witch was listening and watching them carefully. View More

The ‘Displacing Venice’ project proposes to create a public space which can remain unencumbered by acqua alta. The system allows inhabitable areas to rise and consistently remain above high tide levels using displaced lagoon water as a mechanism for volume transfer. Global data feeds embedded drivers which transfer energy from photovoltaics to begin fluid metered volumetric displacement: View More

« WATER TIME ? » //STATEMENT / SIMULACRE// Nowadays,  Venice  is  a  picture  of  herself.  She  becomes  as superficial as her copy of Las Vegas : to be a « simulacre ». She exists for tourists and per tourists. She forgot quotidian, her habitants and what made a city. As History, tourists continue the tradition of melting pot and movement. As we can see on smallest scale, Venice is a city of crossing: the feeling of the city is a labyrinth, which is constantly moving in the space and time. Venice is the place of the world creation show with biennials. Paradoxically, the city is frozen and she is a desert of creation. //FORM / RELIVING// We propose to assume the tourist effect as a tool to develop a local economy and to participate in the stimulation of the city. It reverses the “simulacre” statement as a true city by becoming a reliving city. In this way, Venice may find an economy and a quotidian in relation with tourism activity. Venice should become independent in a term of energy, food and activities (tourism production, services, city’s needs, creation space and daily using). We propose to use water space to install new architectures who is the only area without patrimonial rules. It can be the place of architectural freedom creation and possibilities. View More

The city of Venice is an open air museum. It is the only city in the world capable of attracting tourists all over the year, who dream to go there at least once in life before it sinks. The city of Venice is an important historical heritage in a specific environmental context: the Lagoon is a unique place where a sea and a lagoon ecosystem cohabit. Venice works as a touristic magnet with the the lagoon as its hinterland. View More

The project celebrates memories of Venice. Our main concern lies in the notion of preservation, acting in connection to both character and spatial characteristics of the city. As a result a new vertical typology emerges accumulating pieces, facades and whole buildings of the “old” Venice. Based in three geologically stable points, there is a constant construction process of adding/saving more and more elements of the city, directly connected to the sinking frequency. In the most extreme case, the city will be witnessed as three accumulated interconnecting towers where urban elements of Venice transform their identity in order to adapt to the new vertical scenario. View More

Manual Context  1. Download App, 2. Notice : The competition, 3. Shuffle the Venice, 4. Upload 5. Vote,  6. Select the Idea,  7. Transform the Venice 1. Download App. If you visit the City of Venice homepage, You can find banner of Venice 2.0. Click the banner, you can download app. 2. Notice Install the app. You can catch the competition theme, related to Venice’s event, every month.. (ex) carnival, La Sensa, The Vogalonga, The Biennale, Festa del Redentore, Venice film Festival View More

“Theatro-Venezia” City is a theater. It`s the theater in which actions are  replaced by lowering and lifting the curtain of the day and night. Theater is a stage, an ideal model of the world, “divine idea”, baroque park like metaphor of ideal staging ideas. All parts of the park are interconnected. Everything are subordinate to common focus. The stage is a hose of actors, changeable movement. All of this is the chaos of parts of “divine idea”. View More

Since fate forces me to go elsewhere, the grief of leaving you, o beautiful nest, continually grows within me and weighs me down… from that tranquil and fair Adria, unequaled by any other in the things that adorns paradise on earth; from those golden mansions of marble and carved stone built upon the waters in such a manner that the sea quietly returns to contemplate their exceeding beauty; and thus send its waves, purged of their fury, to irrigate the noble city, queen of the seas, upon the seas ensconced, at whose feet the water humbly subsides, and by varied and torturous channels flows through her along countless paths… View More

To keep, to compile, to photograph, to record… to consume, Venice feeds masses of tourists in search of pictures. Venice attracts. The old stone, the promise of heritage and track of the History satisfies the tourist: the photographic picture corresponds to that of its imagination. No routs. No discoveries, just a correspondence, just a confirmation. View More

Sposalizio della Terraferma The lagoon, a way of living with nature Venice and its lagoon have a long and strong tradition in coping with the forces of nature. The islands and marshlands of the lagoon has always provides safe and rich habitats. And when the harbours of Torcello silted up in the 14th century, people moved to other islands that were created by that same natural process; sedimentation. From this point of view, the large-scale engineering of the Renaissance that diverted the rivers like the Brenta and the Piave around the lagoon were a crucial mistake in Venice’s history. These interventions deprived the lagoon from the sediment that is today so desperately needed to allow the islands and marshlands of the lagoon to keep up with the rising sea level. View More

Barefooted Cranes The very near future of San Marco Featuring crane feet, origami, and hydrophytes. “Aqua Alta” is a problem which venetians expect to find waking up each morning in San Marco. Taking a stroll in a pair of thigh-high galoshes seems no big deal. However, this daily mishap is the critical cause of various problems which the city currently faces. Not to mention the deterioration of the buildings, inefficient use of space, but the most annoying problem is that you can’t walk around the city without soaking your body. View More

IN VENICE… In Venice, everything is sinking. The ground is sinking. Buildings are sinking. The whole city itself is sinking. And with this tragic phenomenon comes the business closures, agricultural damage, decline in population, and the list goes on… rendering the city uninhabitable. Some even fear that Venice is bound to become a ghost city as water continues to claim everything this beautiful city has. View More

In the mid of the 1500, on the “forma urbis”’s theme of Venice, fought the two theses of two characters which held differents roles and interests on the city.(1) Cristoforo Sabbadino, proto Judiciary water, an expert technician of the conservation lagoon’s problem, he think that the “tecnique” must be used not for change or upset the nature “virginea” of Venice but for “store” first and “restore” after. Alvise Cornaro is on the other hand a “beginner”, but his culture is supported by a lot of relations of writers and philosophers; his interests coincide with his landholdings situated on the mainland. View More

INFLATABLE VENICE “Venice is a city you must design and build for yourself. No one can show you Venice. There is no such place. Out of the multiple Venice’s, none authentic, only you can find the one that has any value.” Jeanette Winterson, reviewed on Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’, 2001. At this moment of Venice’s most fragile circumstance of its long history, View More

ISLANDS Surrounded by marshy lagoon, the city of Venice is originated as a group of islands. While the city expanded to become an interlocked community through physical connections, the peripheral Islands were neglected and maintained its original form. We were particularly interested in islands’ degree of neglect and purity of preservation. Those islands are not only pure remnant of its history, but essentials to leads the way to its future. Ironically, individuals in contemporary society seek to maintain one’s privacy in reality, but want to establish public and social connection in virtuality. The typology of island is an imperative element fulfilling the dual desire in search of isolation and exposure. View More

Saving Venice It’s a dark time for the human civilization, the rise of the water-level permanently changed the surface of the earth into a Waterworld. However, a small island still survives: Venice, with the help of generous donators And inventive architects, built a cylindrical wall around the city. This object serves not only as a protection against floods, but also as a massive hotel infrastructure for the only remains of modern civilization. View More

Voicity Voicity understands the City as a perpetual organizing field of forces in movement. The wildness of everyday Venice – millions of individual voice trajectories forming the cities collective social, cultural and economical identity are stored, captured and made visible through Voicity. The Ethos of disintermediation through the democratization of communications infrastructure penetrates into every aspect of social consciousness and ritualized behavior. Voicity opens ears to make these new behaviors visible and enables a democratic access to public realm. View More

Which thought, which favourite issue, which particular space, in the whole of  complexity of a city of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Can we try to analize, harmonize and enrich with particular attention? To this riflexive and big question, a possible and probable answer is availing of an idea. In its enormous size, the idea is to create a phase of initialization towards sceneries of historical and contemporary awareness and, at the same time, turned to the future. With this intention the idea, in its complex, can be subjectively imaginated whit many variants, with reference to archaic and future technologies, probably to arrive at the end with social-economical developing dynamics. View More

The Lift Venice is unreal, it’s an island off the world detached from the reality of men. The tourist doesn’t visit Venice, he visits a postcard, a frozen city he fantasizes. For him, the city is a sequence of images he has built, an imaginary shared by all. For the tourist, the Venetian is the pizza cook, the tourist guide, the gift shop salesman. View More

“No, we are not and do not want to be just a museum, a hotel, a vacation resort, a Prussian blue horizon where foreigners come for their honeymoon.” Gabriele D’Annunzio Prose di Ricerca, 1927. The city of Venice is constantly viewed from afar; from Turner, to Canaletto, to the tourist on a cruise ship, the city is often perceived very differently. The fundamental process of how the city is viewed and then understood is explored in Venice through the urban proposition of a threshold to the city. The territory between the island of Murano and mainland Cannregio, is located in a prominent position within which to question the current arrangement of the entrance to the city. The territory was explored in great depth, picking out elements of interest, ultimately informing the basis of the proposal and its application within Venice. View More

TRANSITION 1 From an ephemeral to a permanent tourism Venice, tourism and mass consuption A  – “Do you want to go back to St.Mark’s Square?” B – “No. There’s nothing there. No. There’s not much to do there. You could sit and watch a million tourists” (tourists dialogue, S.Vidal square, Venice) View More

SOCIAL BRIDGES Venice is a city created through the bridging together of various islands. This island system was once what limited the growth of the city but it has as well created a separate advantageous situation the creation of social as well as transport canals. These canals are the heart and soul of the cities transportation network. A major issue however is that as the city grew it grew to have limited pathways along these networks for various reasons one specifically is that there wasn t the support system there to maintain the extra reclaimed spaces. View More

Revive Venice’s Communities

Venice has three levels above water: low, middle, upper. At low level (ground level), competition for space between tourism and local communities is extremely intense. Tourist are everywhere at the low level. Whereas on the upper level (roof top level), apart from various holiday buildings, all else are the local community residential space. The existence of the middle level maintains the independency of the upper level from the lower. According to this, one strategy for winning back community space in the future is to constrain the sprawl of tourism to the lower level while exploring new ways to use spaces on the upper level for community purposes. Based on this analysis, we developed the concepts of ‘Invisible Wall’ and ‘New community space linked by wet grid’. View More

POETIC & KINETIC modern symbiosis of Venice and its visitors WHO IS VENICE? It was defeated without siege, but by chain of distant and close events, with special due to the discovery and building of steam ships far away in England. The set of historical circumstances made Venice lose its supremacy on the sea, and consequently its centrality in other fields: money, material goods, ideas and visions were no longer produced here, but imported from elsewhere. View More

“Undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man” Luigi Barzini, writing in The New York Times Venice has been known as the “city of Water”, “City of Bridges”, The Floating City” and “City of Canals”. Basic Condition Sinking of Venice | Venice is now sinking. Some scientists prognosticate that Venice will whole disappear under the water, for about 100 years. View More

THE MOVING CITY OF VENICE An idea to prevent the extinction of Venice and to survive for future and yet to think beyond the status quo “Venice is considered one of the most beautiful city in the world, it is well known as ‘La Dominante or The Dominant’, ‘Serenissima or the most serene’, ‘City of Water’, ‘City of Bridges’, ‘The city of Light’. The Venetian Republic was a major maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and a staging area for the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto, as well as a very important center of commerce (especially silk, grain, spice trade) and art in the 13th century until the end of 17th century.” View More

Venice: a unique city, since it has developed on an element – water – which is its characterizing and, at the same time, deteriorating factor. The sea has made Venice live its most glorious moments, as an economic, commercial and military power; cradle of culture, architecture and arts, which have given the city its eternal beauty. That same sea is responsible for its periods of decline and for the corrosion that still consumes it. View More

The history of Venice appears as a non stop-vision: from Canaletto to Aldo Rossi, from Superstudio to the 10 imagines for west Canareggio, signed among the others by Moneo, Eiseman, Hejduc, all the way to the more recent projects as Ghery’s one for the new airport, exposed at the “Venezia città nuova” exhibition, or to the very recent initiative Real Venice whereby major artists have donated their creative vision to portray the change of this extraordinary city. View More

Venice City Vision net_rest bridges Idea The aim of the project is to change the way of using the channels in Venice. So far they were used for gondola rides. They were inaccessible for many people. Imagine that you can walk on the water, that there is an alternative way of sightseeing Venice then gondola rides. This alternative is offered by the project. View More

Venezia sta per morire. Che sia per lo sprofondamento nella laguna o per l’abbandono da parte dei suoi cittadini, sembra che la città storica sia destinata ad avere un futuro breve. Ma se da una parte sono stati presi provvedimenti per evitare lo sprofondamento dell’isola – il criticatissimo MOSE su tutti, inserito in un complesso di interventi volti alla salvaguardia della laguna – dall’altra, invece, le azioni e le scelte intraprese non sembrano adatte ad arrestare l’emorragia iniziata negli anni cinquanta e che ha visto la perdita dei due terzi della popolazione da parte della città: i maggiori interventi per la creazione di aree residenziali sono localizzati sulla terraferma, inoltre è prevista la creazione della Sublagunare, una via di comunicazione che collegherebbe l’aeroporto Marco Polo a Murano e Venezia accorciando di dieci minuti i tempi di spostamento dalla terraferma all’isola, probabilmente a vantaggio più dei turisti che dei cittadini. View More

VISUAL AND INFRASTRUCTURAL CONNECTION IN VENICE Introduction – Analysis The introduction to the announcement of competition by Luca Molinari is named “How can change the nature of the city of Venice in the coming decades?” The nature of cities like Venice cannot be changed – and it must not be changed; most of all it’s not architect’s duty to decide how to change Venice. Venice problems are not referable to the city as an architectural subject, but to how the city itself can be used. In the last decades Veneto’s chief town was utilized only as a tourists funfair and it was not considered as a polyhedric city. Nowadays, Venice is most like its Las Vegas’ copy! View More

Venice city vision Would be Venice an excellent node in the “ubiquitous cities” net? Will be Venice able to transform its historical inability to adapt itself to technological progress into a beautiful handling of physical space, once a time? The huge polluted Portomarghera spaces, full of “Hard Architectures” frames composed of sheds, big machineries, negative environmental and social externalities, are evidences of the Venice industrial history; a very different history from the well-known pre-industrial one. According to Nicholas Negroponte, Portomarghera is an historical monument of a hard development irreparably beaten by the new rules of “Soft architecture machines”. View More

VENICE SOCIAL NETWOR CONCEPT APPLIED TO ARCHITECTURE Why live packed into increasingly busy and polluted city if you could find alternative solutions? Why do not consider available places, close to Venice where, in the not-too remote future, climate changes will make inhospitable large portions of land and an increasing number of people will contend the limited space in which to live? A response to this is the project developed by us, completely self-sufficient and ecologically sustainable, that, on an urban scale, uses the concept of network based on two milestones, connection and sharing. View More

VENICE, THE CITY OF BRIDGES Venice is a nearly perfect pedestrian city. It is almost too beautiful to consider for modification, improvement or alternation. However, it is intriguing to consider that the beautiful scenes of Venice are always based on pedestrian height or from gondolas. They are beautiful but flat memories accumulated over time. Therefore, in re-configuring the beauty of this city, I suggest transforming the city’s flat experience into a more multi layered one by re-scaling and re-materializing the bridge. View More

Boat-in Park on the water The proposal is a green-roofed boat park on the water in front of Piazza San Marco. The park is accessible only to boat owners, who are equally real residents in Venice, as in the car free city, they are likely to have boat licenses rather than driving ones. The opportunity to spend time on a boat in the special location of Venice, with sunlight through the trees, distanced from the tourist’s attraction, gives a sense of privilege of living in Venice to the real residents, and that would enhance and regenerate the uniqueness of Venetian on-water culture. View More

Venetian Flying Archipelago: Soft eco-touristic infrastructures

1.The Venetian lagoon is composed by a complex ecosystem of animals and plants adapted to surviving in this environment, where the water body plays a master role in the finest equilibrium between natural biomes and the human activity, principally concentrated by the city of Venice. Cycles of continuous symbiotic exchange between them, define nowadays, a delicate and extremely fragile condition, in both ecological and architectural terms. View More

A MOBILE BRIDGE

Venice as a city has outgrown its borders and is rapidly being abandoned. An island completely isolated needs to be constantly revitalised through an active connection to the main land. The idea is to connect Venice to the land around, with something more than a static transportation connection, but with activities that will involve citizens from both the main land and the island. The Island ceases to be an isolated phenomenon, but will be an active participant in the present. View More

In the Belly of the Whale Marco Polo said: “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.” View More

Flood, Sound, Drift, Snag Sea levels are predicted to rise exponentially by as much as 1.4m by 2100. Low lying Venice is under threat of serious widespread flooding far beyond the seasonal tidal flooding that it has become adapted to: a rise of only 50cm would see large areas of the city permanently flooded, particularly the low lying sestiere of Castello and already frequently inundated San Marco. View More

Venice, june 6th 2011 What is this strange city, I travelled all over the world in my life, but I’ve never seen something like that! A city that lives on his memories, which slightly differs from that Venetian masks and 16th century’s boat races……However there is a willingness to experiment, to dare something new to be in the van of international cultural scene, but the city remains the same, always dirty, always too crowded, often flooded, exaggerated in its merits and in its defects. We outline an utopian city, and we therefore imagine an urban model not only in the form of design, but mostly as a group of principles and rules that allow and facilitate social change and think of new resources that would enable us to live better. View More

Italy is one of the largest consumers of bottled water in the world. In excess of 20 million tourists visit Venice alone every year, consuming an estimated thirteen million bottles of water, in addition to those consumed by its thousands of inhabitants. It is well documented that tourists tend to be suspicious of tap water, exacerbated by the public water fountains themselves being unmarked, old and corroded. In fact, tap water in Italy is strictly controlled and Venetian water comes from the same sources as some bottled waters. View More

Bricole-age takes the public infrastructure of channel markers in the Venetian Lagoon as its site. According to the Istituto Veneto, there are 6,768 channel markers in the Venetian Lagoon, each composed of at least three sixteen-foot oak posts about a foot in diameter. The exact number of these individual posts, called “bricola” (plural: bricolē), is unknown but could be as many as 90,000. On average, these posts last only three years before they must be replaced at a cost to the city and municipality of over four million Euros per year. In a city that is already drowning in maintenance costs, this represents a significant problem. Existing proposals call for the replacement of the historic wooden bricole with plastic replicas, estimated to have a lifespan of at least 10 years. Rather than seeking to imitate how the bricole look, this proposal seeks to understand how the bricole work, as a starting point for generating a proposal. This requires an understanding of the material and cultural history of Venice and its lagoon, as well as the economic and ecological balance that has been so essential to the success of the city. Much like the city itself, it is at the intersection of these forces that we find the bricole. View More

The specific situation of Venice has been nursed in the environment of lagoon. The environmental change of the current lagoon is an environmental change of current Venice. In other words, for the lagoon, it is necessary to appeal for the critical situation called the submergence of the Venice to people of the world. Here, we propose a new urban infrastructure in the lagoon. This proposal indicates a critical mind of the environment-crisis from the lagoon of Venice to the world. View More

BRIDGING THE GAP Venice City Vision Architectural Competition Project Description ‘Bridging the gap’ is a project looking to insert ‘New public spaces’ in the structure of Venice. It acts as a catalyst for the process of adaptation by both Venetians and tourists. It is about a space that readapts and reconfigures with respect to feedback mechanisms to accommodate both locals and tourists and to enhance the interaction between them without displacing anyone. The purpose of this intervention is to provide a new public space for Venetians which is not static but emerges and self organizes to hold multiple functions in any given time and space. View More

Wed / Aug / 2nd / 2050 / clean I came back to Venice in 15 years. 15 years ago, I came to Venice to see the last appearance of Venice. It was very complicated at that time. I was dizzy because of the people. Maybe Venice residents felt the same. As sea levels rise and the ground of Venice sink, Venice residents have to prepare plans for a move. That is why they drove a stake into the ground again. When I came back to Venice, it had changed a lot. Venice of the past was flooded and six towers were built there. I went to transfer zone to go to St. Marco tower. Six towers are connected by transfer zone and peoples are used to tram. Some tourists used to ship for feel nostalgia. View More

LAGOON PARK

1. From City to Lagoon

Lagoon Park positions Venice within the larger context of the Venetian Lagoon.  While 20% of the 550 square kilometer lagoon consists of islands and canals, 80% is void of definition and development.  Neither land nor canal, this void exists as an indeterminate and transitional zone that mediates the equilibrium between land and water.  Devoid of program and activity, this amphibious ecological system is latent with possibility to reinvigorate and resuscitate the identity of Venice.  The future of the city lies not at its dense and saturated center, but within its vast and open periphery. View More

Dear Irina! This is our fourth day in this amazing city. It is unbelievable how much beauty surrounds us. But you know it is also heart-breaking to see and to know, that this was once a living place. People explored the streets of Venice, and instead of the submarine-gondolas of today, real gondolas were floating around in the water, like those on old paintings and photos. You can find several of these if you draw up the keyword from the System. You should really think over to these, because they appear in really high quality, with spatial dimensional renovations on the screen of your helmet. You wouldn’t believe it, but I actually saw a real one, of course just from under water, when the taxi brought us to our floating platform. View More

Intro – Venice is like a theater where you can be a protagonist on the background of water city. The endless flow of tourists has been a vital dimension of Venice. It has two aspects to make her alive or make her dead. To maintain the current appearance of Venice and strive for future, it needs to be balanced that Venetian and tourists play main character together. We try to propose a masquerade space by using piles not infringing the famous and old stage of Venice. View More

VENICE – A FOREST OF DESIRE Modern people are continuously weaving desires into a forest. As technology advanced, more and more possibilities enrich our life as well as the way we experience the world. While the desire of us is expanded unstoppably and never has a end. In this very era, the problem of Venice, in my point of view, is not a problem that could be solely solved by a design. It’s the problem caused by the desires of human beings. Venice accumulated a huge amount of art and cultural heritage during the past hundreds of years. Everyone in the world knows this beautiful Italian city. Yet in the past, confined by the barrier of information and transportation, the image of a city remained intact in a long time. As technology progressed more, our desires increased as well. Tourists come into Venice for sightseeing. Artists come into Venice for gaining fame. View More

A WORLD OF PICTURES Venice is a city consumed by its tourists. It lives and dies from them. They make it live as well as they contribute to its death. We propose a way to restore to the venicians their island and offer, at the same time, an unforgettable sightseeing tour for its visitors In Venice, a railway runs accross the city, glides into it and magnifies it. An indomitable curve climbs along the churches towers, swirls around its bridges and dives fearlessly into its somber water. Lines recreate and reinvent these places. A new architecture rises. View More

In the early 19th c., Lord Byron enjoyed a daily nude swim from Ca’Rezzonico to the Lido and back. As recently as the 1950s venetians could swim in the water off of the zattere. To fall into the canal today will result in a visit to hospital and a steady diet of medication. Venetian canals function as the main means of vehicular transportation and as the primary outlet for sewage. Indeed, sewage flows almost directly into the canals; it is truly the most beautiful sewer in the world! If unchecked, sediment can build up in the canals and cause several problems. Canal depths can become so shallow at low tides that they become impassible. High sediment levels can also lead to increased rates of infrastructural damage. View More

TOURISM AND ENDANGERED SPECIES If we think of Venice as a natural environment, then we can safely say that its inhabitants are an endangered species. Venetians are in Extinction Venice’s cultural heritage and particular urban landscape have made it a tourism destination that attracts 50.000 people a day, 2.927 million in 2006. The city’s economy is now almost completely dependent on tourists, and there is virtually no more local production or even locals. Venice’s former inhabitants now rent their properties in venice and chose to live in neighboring Mestre, Venice is not for Venetians anymore, economical priorities have shifted the focus of the city. Venetians in Venice are like Pandas in the wild, there are fewer and fewer every day, their environment is no longer livable and therefore their life is no longer natural, they are no longer Venetians. View More

Venice unhooked Since the construction of the road causeway in the 20th century, the centro storico has been in a state of suspended animation – hooked up to a road-based life support system that has robbed it of its autonomy. Although the cessation of water extraction and proposal to recharge the aquifers should arrest the sinking of the city and the completion of the MOSE project should address its vulnerability to flooding from the sea, the removal of these threats reveals the deeper problems of a dysfunctional city with an in-balance of tourists, an ageing resident population and exclusive/prohibitive land and housing prices. We propose the removal of the causeway, and a radical adjustment of the patterns of movement around and across the lagoon. View More

VENICE A flash mob city construction Venice is like an appearance in the Laguna. It stands alone, as a perfect object, in a fragile but endless equilibrium between land and water. It emerges from the water as symbol of beautiful but temporary victory of soil over water. As long as the conquest is considered an event you might see Venice as an event in itself. The Redentore Festival, which dates back to the XVI century, makes clear how close the relationship between city construction, happenings and sacredness is. The Redentore began as a feast to give thanks for the end of the plague of 1576. Since then, a temporary votive bridge of barges from the Zattere to the Giudecca was built every year. Venetians didn’t surrender even when the conquest seemed impossible, like connecting these two shores too far apart one from another. They provided city with new soil, the temporary one. Conglomerated barges weren’t ment to act as a bridge, but in Venice events make everything become soil, as soil is the most precious gift they can have. View More

OLD AGE IS A SHIPWRECK

01. Venice is an archipelago consisting of 117 artificial islands created in 421. Venice is sinking, it has lost 24 centimeters in 100 years, the forecasts point to a loss of 20 to 50 centimeters by 2050. Venice loses its inhabitants. Now the population of the city is only sixty thousand. If the trend remains stable, that is to say a loss from 2000 to 2500 people every ten years, Venice will not have any inhabitants by 2035. View More

SEA CREATURE The whole idea of our project is based on the anatomy of the octopus SUPPORTING CONSTRUCTION They have no shell or bones and that make them flexible. Eight tentacles are flexible and they are going below and above water surface, and on that way they give needed support to Venice. WATER PURIFIER It is a fact that water is much polluted, so the suction cups under each tentacle have role as a water purifier. PARKS AND VERTICAL FARM Parks are places for enjoyment and recreation. Eight tentacles are giving not only stability to our floating city, but also green parks and farms. There are green roads, Parks, some Market where you can always find some fresh vegetables and fruits. View More

Venice is a fish. Watch it from above, looks like a sole fish. Lying on the bottom. On the map, the bridge connecting the mainland looks a line. Venice seems to have hooked the fishhook. Is linked with a double-line: binary steel and asphalt’s strip. But this is happened only after an hundred years. We were fear that Venice could change idea and restart. We connected to the lagoon to avoid his departure for ever. We said to the others that we did it for protection, because after years of mooring, isn’t able to swim! Could capture it immediately, could be taken from a Japanese whaling, could show it in a Disnayland’s Aquarium. The truth is that we can’t live without her. View More

Context: The global warning is coming to an end and the Earth is going through a short ice age. The sea level is dropping; the sun is slowly loosing its heat. The Venice Lagoon undertakes a period of sedimentation and clings to the mainland. Then, arises a new Venice, the Venice of the depths, the Venice of the foundations, or that of constructive genius. Venice divested herself of her waters, of her matrix, and is now revealing a new perspective: we discover a field of millions of oakpiles, underneath the city, supporting it. Venice’ foundations unfold before our eyes, offering a new virgin land, waiting to be explored. View More

FLOATING ROOMS Without streets and vehicles, the uproar of wheels, the brutality of horses, and with its little winding ways where people crowd together, where voices sound as in the corridors of a house, where the human step circulates as if it skirted the angles of furniture and shoes never wear out, the place has the character of an immense collective apartment, in which Piazza San Marco is the most ornamented corner and palaces and churches, for the rest, play the part of great divans of repose, tables of entertainment, expanses of decoration. View More

Unde Origo Inde Salus “From origin springs salvation.” Inscription from Madonna della Salute (referencing the Feast of Mary and the date of the founding of Venice, 25 March 421) “All comes from dust, and to dust all return.” – Ecclesiastes 3:20 Conceptual underpinnings Like the lagoon that surrounds it, Venice embodies all that is changing and variable. The city undulates with the tides, its foundations inscribed in the water. Everything is seen in relation to the sea, from the mundane (such as the logistics of traffic) to the ethereal (such as evanescent quality of the light). Ever-shifting between water and land, Venice is the source of endless fantasies about birth and re-birth. Our architectural intervention for Venice has at its foundations Pythagorean philosophies concerning the transmigration of souls (re-birth) and apeiron (regeneration of the world through the action of opposites). View More

Venice was dependant on consumerism… A consumerism which polluted the world and changed the global environment… A new city… Born of the objects that brought ruin to the old… Life used to be great… We had power and food and everything we needed. And it was cheap. It was so cheap we could escape to new worlds whenever we wanted. We were decadent and vain. Everyone could have nice things. But then we went too far. We had airplanes and cars and cruise liners. We were consumed in our greed and vanity, each person wanted something bigger and better, and they got it. View More

Venice, The 24th Century The historical city, by now completely submersed in water, continues to live upon the seabed of the ancient lagoon as if it were a new Atlantis. Meanwhile the contemporary city is confronted with a new scenario: completely surrounded by water it rises 3 km high, all within a tower that covers 12 hectares of the sea’s surface, its base installed within the empty space of the old Maritime station. View More

VENICE CITYVISION_ Transcript of the ‘City of Colonies’ “You have only plenty of fish, rich and poor live together in equality, a single food feeds everyone; uniform dwellings protect each one of you; so nobody can desire the belongings of others and, by so living, you avoid envy which is the worst vice in the world” Venice (Italy), The city of BRIDGE The city of MASQUERADE The city of WATER The city of CANALS THE FLOATING CITY- ‘LA DOMINANTE’ View More