Of Stones and Travelers: The Venetian matter

Abstract

Venezia, la Serenissima. The most serene Republic. One adjective is sufficient to identify the city of Venice; more complicated is to figure out its singularities: the city of canals, trades, cultural exchange, gate between the west and the east, the city of the myth, the romantic city, the city of the endless descriptions. “At once solid and liquid, at once air and stone”, claimed Erica Jong, almost as if she wanted to seize in a sentence the multiple facets of the Venetian character. The several representations and attributes that depict Venice not only precede its reality, but constitute a determinant part of its character: the island is simultaneously more than its narrations and more than its reality. Starting from this dicotomy, the following project focuses on the analysis of Venice’s reality, the one of its present situation, by keeping its narrations as a boundary condition. The consideration of Venice not being the most serene Republic anymore is a fact. The city is experiencing a transitional moment in its lifetime: events as tourists’ invasion, drop of the population, transformation of the building stock to accomodate tourists’ needs are determinant factors for the future of the city, internationally recognised as slowly dying. The transformations are influenced by the effect that phenomena as overtourism produced on the island. And it is precisely the relationship between overtourism and Venice the topic that is tackled in this project, by taking the city as a case study, a symbol in the broader discussion about city and overtourism. Therefore this project does not want to be considered as a method for the definition of a solution for all the cities that are experiencing the aforementioned situation, but the opposite: the foundation for the development of an architectural proposal for the Venetian context, with the aim of invigorate the international debate around the topic of overtourism and cities’ transformations. Therefore, 'Of Stones and Travelers' is a project that relates with the city of Venice, considered as the symbol of the difficult relationship between cities and tourists, stones and travelers: the situation in which the city is transforming into a productive machine in its own consuming. It is by acknowledging this present condition that I have decided to analyse the city of Venice, by trying to understand what can be done, as architect, in order to affect its condition, with the aim of positively affecting its future. The exploration perpetuated with the project aims to understand and test the way in which the permanence of visitors in Venice can be affected via architectural terms. The theoretical approach adopted to reach this goal is the one of developing an exploration of the logics that undermine the characters of the city of Venice, therefore their understanding and transposition into a modern design. It is important to clarify that such exploration is not an aesthetical re-interpretation of Venice but the opportunity to test how the assemblage of the city can evolve without being stuck in its picturesque idea. Therefore, the value that I have researched is the understanding of Venice as an assemblage, as a combination of different layers which relationship define the character of the city. Its dissection and application in modern time is the value I have tried to pursue in my design.