"...the Genoese fleet entered the Venetian lagoon, captured and sank Venetian ships and blocked off escape routes. They seemed at the point of victory but (...) Venice built a new fleet and barricaded the canals. Turning defense into attack, she besieged and finally defeated the Genoese navy..."
1104 the Arsenale di Venezia is founded, a shipyard, the world's first and for hundreds of years largest factory for the mass production. It is said to have had an output of up to one trade ship a day. It has to be efficient due to the fact that the city relies totally on the products, it has to be dense and well organized due to the expenditure of construction in the middle of the water, it has to be walled against spies and for security. It almost accidentally becomes a modern factory way before this term gets common. The factory is even for today's eyes very large, at the time of its foundation it is an intervention and an investment of breathtaking dimensions. It is a very successful intervention.
The factory borders closest to the city and is part of it. It is surrounded by a impermeable brick wall way taller than necessary to prevent view or invasion. Its narrow entrances and their watchtowers are protected by marvelous stone lions and superfluously decorated. Still today the crossing of the factory is somewhat uncanny as it feels forbidden and at the same time attractive with its beauty and history as the node point of Venice's power.
The existing buildings on the site, seen as singular objects at any place, don't have too much architectural value; their substance is not too good, the first and second floors humid. The living conditions are inappropriate in a way that most of the rooms don't have enough light and there is not enough social distance to the neighboring buildings.
Important elements of the proposed institutes such as performance halls and lecture rooms are of entirely different nature than the existing residential structures.
It is one peculiarity of Venetian houses that makes for the persistence of their built form: the foundations are exactly below the walls; the change of any walls and interior subdivision creates subsequently not affordable expenses. In addition there is some reason to not too closely look at the quality of the posts: due to recent human impact the waters of the lagoon both decreased in quality and stability of tide with the consequence of proceeding deterioration of Venice's foundations.
Changing the use of a building inevitably leads to destruction of the old and construction of new foundations. This means in Venice: starting at point zero again and building in the water.
On the other hand one finds in Venice the maybe singular situation in the world that an entire city is protected by law. No intervention is allowed, no building may be torn down, no facade may be changed.
Working on the design for the new institutes starts from an investigation if the existing structures can be used.
It is not only the above mentioned practical reasons that make for abandoning this idea quickly. It is even more the Venetian attitude: the fabric grew with large interventions. The Piazza San Marco, The Doge's palace, the Arsenale and all other past contributions to the success of the city were major interventions in the fabric and erased large part of the existing city. For sure the past fame of Venice would not have been possible without these changes. Both the physical form but also the activity of construction represent change and progress.
It is rather the way the changes were made which should attract attention than the prevention of changes. The architecture of the interventions is able to convey the message that the former structures are destroyed for a better future purpose. The form of the buildings and their use are an emotional experience and appropriate for contemporary use.
The proposed institutes are large buildings. There is at least two major rules which make the Venetian large buildings successful: they produce aura, and their form and use can be captured immediately.
Approaching a solution in this way makes the task one of abstraction: it is not the physical reality of a place which gets carefully analyzed and which serves as a blueprint or even as the skin for a future solution, but its the abstracted values both of the place and of "the times".
The form of a not-careful-analysis of the place is a comparatively common one: it consists of activities like visit of the place, browsing through its history, through images, through literature, through its cultural peculiarities, music, play, and meeting its people.
More complicated seems the task of a not-careful-analysis of "the times". There is some hints that it is a technique of confidently allowing the imagination to work, initiated by maybe random or maybe focused observations, by personal experiences, by social conventions or their disobedience.
One might say like Sharoun: People gather in circles every time they play or hear music. And then the thinking is around a definition of a circle for an auditorium.
One might state: Distraction is a fact during each performance; the thoughts are leaving, flying, wandering, the view tries to follow them. The space then wants to accommodate the wandering, distracting view and enable the thoughts to fly.
One might find out characteristics of modern music, for instance its tension between traditional ways of arranging tonal sequences and the discovery of "new" sounds and connections; and one might to express the same tension between tradition and experiment in the building sequence.
One might define characteristics of activities or might express observations on activities: Exercising music has an opposite characteristic than performing music: it means enclosing oneself as a single individual or as a group; only the freedom of enclosure allows for experiment and allows for the risk of being ridiculous at moments or of being bad, allows for the mistakes which always in the end were the most inspiring and creative moments.
One might have the idea that music is asymmetric. Unless electronically balanced always one side will be stronger: right as seen from the musician, left from the audience.The saxophone and the flute are played on the right side, the viola, the violoncello, the guitar sound to the right....
One might have desires or wishes arising within the imagination of the place: having view to the towertops of Venice jutting off her fog; or falling asleep with the gentle babbling of waters around.
One might have an imagination about characters of spatial arrangements of buildings; one might find the image of a monastery very appropriate for the organization of an Institute (or even for all building forms): some sort of internalized variety tight up and very close together with links on the one hand to privacy by providing complete retreat space, on the other hand to the outside by showing characters of use and inviting with architectural gestures.
In being surrounded by graphics, advertisements and television, one might have achieved a very strong and critical sense for the balance of geometric figures; a sense which is reinforced by the strong presence of geometric rules and arrangements in the Venetian architecture; this might result in a very geometric arrangement of the building in the hope to make it well perceivable for contemporary eyes and as well fit into the principles of the environment.
Other chapters:
1 Venice I
2 Venice II
4 Browsing
5 Blueprint
6 Construction
7 Bigness
8 Lille
9 Literature