“The acceptance of the discipline of the existing: a ghost that is present during the whole changing process of a building as the physical quality of time embodied in things”.
We felt it was necessary to return the characteristic Venetian freedom and density to the area of the future Venice School of Architecture. At the first stage we took the Venice behind the area, the Campo dell’Anzolo Raffaele, the Canale di Ció, San Nicolo dei Mendicoli, as a city fragment – as a reference point to provide the pedestrian scale from which they could start to build. Mimicking what “Venice” is as a general stylistic approach did not make sense and it was not completely satisfactory to base the project on a morphological scale: A building is a building… Part of the city, but not a city. It was necessary to recommence a new intuition. We felt the project should be a kind of “new building” that has always been there. The series of buildings in the area, facing the Giudecca, used for the storage of goods, became storage for groups of students.
“Folding, zigzagging, seems to give the building a maze quality, increasing the depth in space that has its consequence in time. Now it seems that time -capturing time- has substituted space. Buildings want to capture time, especially in Venice. To enter time, to be at the right time”.
