map studio

Build On Built

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Porta Nuova Tower

Arsenale, Venice (2011)

The Brief

For the tourists who visit each year, Venice appears to be an open-air museum. This clashes with the fact that many buildings were built in the 19th and 20th centuries and that there are still many empty spaces in and around the city. In Venice these forces confront one another in a limited space with repercussions for the whole city. Contact points, edges, and access highlight the conflict between the integrity of existing objects and the wider urban field. With this in mind we will rethink the Tesa 113 building (1545-1550) and its external open spaces located in the Arsenale by considering: The Role of the Front, Building the Void, Reconfiguring the Façade, Inhabiting the Roof, The Space Around.

Project Programme	Mixed-Use Development
Studio Times	09:00 – 12.30 (GMT +2) Venice \| 17:00 – 20.30 Melbourne \| 15.00 – 18.30 China 5th – 16th July (exc. weekends)
Required Skills	Intermediate 2D Drafting (Rhino or AutoCAD) Basic 3D Modelling (Rhino or Sketchup) Basic Photoshop
Required Software	Rhino or AutoCAD Photoshop Sketchup (optional)
Resources	Recommended Reading: 1. The Architecture of the City by Aldo Rossi 2. Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture by Christian Norberg-Schulz
Project Site	The Tesa 113 building and surrounding external area in the Arsenale, Venice. (Tesa 113 is the head building of the Novissima complex)

Project Precinct

Studio Directors

Traudy Pelzel & Francesco Magnani

Francesco Magnani graduated from IUAV in Venice in 1999. Since 2001 he has been an assistant professor at the same university where, in 2007-2008, he was also visiting professor for a design studio investigating architectural composition. In 2007 and 2008 Francesco was a visiting critic at École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Versailles and in 2011 at Fakultät für Architektur, Hochschule München. He is regularly invited to give lectures on MAP studio’s research and projects at a variety of Italian and international architecture events.

Traudy Pelzel graduated from IUAV in Venice in 1994. From 1995 to 1997 she was part of the team that produced the New Masterplan of Venice under the supervision of Professor Leonardo Benevolo and was also at this time a researcher at the Eni-Mattei Foundation on the topic “Sustainable Venice: suggestions for the future — Urban Sustainability and Territorial Structure”. From 2002 to 2006 she was assistant professor at IUAV and is the recipient of a IUAV research grant titled “The Metropolitan City of Venice: Contemporary Landscapes”. She writes about architecture, landscape and infrastructure and is regularly invited to give lectures internationally.

Studio Guests

Andrew Berman
Director
Andrew Berman Architect, New York

Venice Project

Porta Nuova Tower

Arsenale, Venice (2011)

The Porta Nuova Tower – located at the water entrance on the north side of the dock of the Novissima Arsenale of Venice – dates from the first half of XIX century. It was designed and built for masting vessels, but quickly fell into disuse because of the changing technologies of naval engineering.

The aim of the project – winner of the design competition launched in 2006 by the Arsenale di Venezia Spa – was to ensure the conservation and enhancement of the spatiality of the historic building, in unison with the needs arising from the insertion of new features to turn it into a cultural center.

The building is tripartite in its interior. On the ground floor, spaces are organised for the reception and the conference rooms. The first floor houses an exhibition area. Different levels are provided for the mezzanine offices. The architects first recognized and then interpreted the unity and continuity of the vertical space that begins from the first floor, while taking into consideration the typological and structural characteristics of this kind of industrial building. The new distribution of the partitions and volumes, necessary for hosting the main systems equipment, has them configured as separate items and always recognizable in contrast to the original bricked structures. The lift systems are always volumetrically independent of the existing walls. The materials used (exposed concrete, fiber cement panels to the floor, sheets of waxed cor-ten steel) always converse with those preexisting through contrasting textures and patterns.

Photography by Alessandra ChemolloORCH

MAP Studio

MAP studio is an international office for architecture, urbanism and design, which began in 2004 with the union of architects Francesco Magnani and Traudy Pelzel, who then founded their joint architectural firm in 2010, now located in the historic centre of Venice in a beautiful workspace on the second main floor of palazzo Foscarini in front of Carmini church.

MAP studio carries out assignments and combines public and private professional activities with research, focusing on architectural design and urban renewal as well as the transformation of existing buildings, interior design and exhibition design.

Completed works range from the noted renovation of the Porta Nuova Tower in the Venice Arsenale, which presents a benchmark building for the renovation design of historic buildings, to a custom set of exhibition designs, new buildings and several restorations.

Recently MAP studio completed the restoration of a Carlo Scarpa house in Venice. The story of this exceptional building site is documented in the book titled; The House on Grand Canal published by Electa.