Throughout November 2019, Venice has been inundated with the city's worst floods in half a century. Photographs and videos spread across the world showing the city’s iconic St Mark’s Square underwater, with a 2-meter-high surge threatening irreparable damage to historic sites such as Saint Mark’s Basilica. While the city has been battling rising water levels since the 5th century, the recent floods, set against the context of climate change, have spurred debate about how coastal cities are vulnerable to rising sea levels, and how the damage can be mitigated against.
Venice: The Latest Architecture and News
Santiago Calatrava receives a fine for negligence on his bridge in Venice
Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava was fined by the Court of Accounts of Venice to pay 78,000 euros for errors that increased the cost of the construction of the Constitution Bridge on the Grand Canal of Venice.
Italians Ban Large Cruises from the Historical Center Of Venice
Starting September, all ships that exceed 1000 tonnes will be obliged to change their route, in order to prevent them from entering Venice’s lagoon. The Italian government took the decision after major protests due to many incidents, the latest being in June of 2019 where 5 people were injured from a collision between a cruise ship, the dock, and a small tourist boat.
Cloudscapes / Transsolar & Tetsuo Kondo Architects
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Architects: Transsolar & Tetsuo Kondo Architects
- Year: 2010
Mayank Thammalla Transforms the Venetian Canals into an Architectural Canvas
Nothing is ordinary about the Italian city of Venice. Whether it is the vividly-colored architecture that dates back to Gothic and Byzantine eras, or the fact that the city is floating on water, culturally-rich Venice is an intriguing destination for people of all backgrounds and interests.
With every visit to Venice, London-based architect and photographer Mayank Thammalla found himself discovering new scenic views of the city, ones that are often tucked beneath its architecture. In his recent photographic series ‘Echoes of Venice’, Thammalla used the canal ripples as his canvas and displayed the deteriorating architecture of Venice from a unique, inverted perspective.
Blurry Venice Installation / Plastique Fantastique
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Architects: Plastique Fantastique
- Area: 212 m²
- Year: 2019
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Professionals: Kois Architects
M9 Museum Distric / Sauerbruch Hutton
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Architects: Sauerbruch Hutton
- Area: 25600 m²
- Year: 2018
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Manufacturers: Kiefer, NBK North America, Pollmeier
Denise Scott Brown's Photography from the 1950s and 60s Unveiled in New York and London Galleries
An exhibition has opened at New York’s Carriage Trade Gallery celebrating the photography of Denise Scott Brown, highlighting the significance of pop art in the American vernacular. The project was initiated by Scott Brown, and first exhibited in Venice in 2016, with the latest events in London and New York initiated by PLANE-SITE.
The exhibition, titled “Photographs 1956-1966” is co-curated by Andres Ramirez, with 10 photographs selected, curated, and featured for limited sale. As well as being on display at the Carriage Trade Gallery, a concurrent exhibition is taking place in the Window Galleries at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London.
Rethinking the Future of Air Travel: Students and Fentress Architects Collaborate in Venice Biennale Exhibition
Deemed to be the homogenized "spaces of circulation, consumption, and communication", airports around the world appear to be almost indistinguishable in their dissolution of identity. Despite technological changes in air travel, the typology of the airport has remained consistently ordinary.
In the European Cultural Center’s biennial exhibition, students from North Carolina State University’s College of Design worked alongside Curtis Fentress, Ana-Maria Drughi, and Joshua Stephens of Fentress Architects to propose innovative concepts for reshaping air travel. PLANE—SITE’s latest film from their series of short videos of the Time-Space-Existence exhibition showcases this design collaboration.
AD Classics: Venice Hospital / Le Corbusier
This article was originally published on August 15, 2016. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.
Le Corbusier made an indelible mark on Modernist architecture when he declared “une maison est une machine-à-habiter” (“a house is a machine for living”). His belief that architecture should be as efficient as machinery resulted in such proposals such as the Plan Voisin, a proposal to transform the Second Empire boulevards of Paris into a series of cruciform skyscrapers rising from a grid of freeways and open parks.[1] Not all of Le Corbusier’s concepts, however, were geared toward such radical urban transformation. His 1965 proposal for a hospital in Venice, Italy, was notable in its attempt at seeking aesthetic harmony with its unique surroundings: an attempt not to eradicate history, but to translate it.
AD Classics: Nordic Pavilion in Venice / Sverre Fehn
This article was originally published on March 30, 2016. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.
Three were originally invited to draw up plans for a ‘Nordic’ pavilion: the Finnish partnership Reima and Raili Pietilä, Sverre Fehn from Norway, and the Swede, Klas Anshelm. Following the selection of Fehn’s proposal in 1959, Gotthard Johansson wrote in the Svenska Dagbladet of the project’s “stunning simplicity [...], without too many architectural overtones”[1] – a proposal for a space able to unite a triumvirate of nations under one (exceptional) roof.
ISOROPIA / Center for Information Technology and Architecture
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Architects: Center for Information Technology and Architecture: Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Martin Tamke, Yuliya Sinke Baranovskaya, Vasiliki Fragkia, Rune Noël Meedom Meldgaard Bjørnson-Langen, Sebastian Gatz
- Area: 79 m²
- Year: 2018
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Manufacturers: Alurays, Dyneema yarn DSM, Glass Fiber rods
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Professionals: str.ucture, Alurays
Architectural Intervention: Transforming Venice’s Historic Structures to Fit Contemporary Needs
The history of Venice’s architecture, as seen today, is a semblance of styles centuries old. A destination rich in culture, many of Venice’s existing buildings, from homes alongside the thin interior canals to the grand domed churches of Palladio, have remained stagnant in their overall design and layout since the 16th century. Once a hub of Byzantine and European trade, the city now thrives on a steady stream of tourism and a foundational group of local residents.
The structures that make up the city’s compact matrix, once integral to its function as a commercial empire, have come to take on new functions through architectural intervention; notably, architects such as Carlo Scarpa, OMA, and Tadao Ando have had a large hand in this process.