STUDIO
SNØHETTA
Venice 24
Location
Venice, Italy
Year
2024
Program
Spaces of Production
Team Leaders
Jette Cathrin Hopp (Director, Snøhetta)
Tommaso Maserati (Architect, Snøhetta)
Jules Gallissian (Architect Urbanist, Snøhetta)
Team
Irina Pirvu (University College London, UK)
Juan Pablo Caso (Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina)
Hedvig Skarstedt (Central St Martins, UK)
Sofiia Lukachuk (Newcastle University, UK)
Zixuan Li (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Thitaree Suwiwatchai (Harvard University, USA)
Shuhang Chen (The University of Sydney, Australia)
Yiwei Bu (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Yian Li (SCI-Arc – Southern California Institute of Architecture, USA)
Feifan Bai (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Fredrik Lundberg Paulsen (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway)
John Martin (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Viktoria Dauer (Columbia University, USA)
Faris Almadani (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Project
The Productive Garden – Hortus Conclusus
“There is something so different in Venice from any other place in the world, that you leave at once all accustomed habits and everyday sights to enter an enchanted garden.”
Mary Shelley, in “Walks in Italy”
Snøhetta is interested in exploring the past, present, and future of space, fostering connections on both local and global scales.
In the transformative Snøhetta studio project “The Productive Garden – Hortus Conclusus,” we invite students to engage with Venice’s historical and contemporary contexts through the lens of integrated art, architecture, and landscape design. The studio aims to explore the delicate balance of space in both local and global scenarios. Students are encouraged to envision architectural solutions that integrate production and sustainability, using innovative spatial concepts that benefit both community and environment, focusing on the typology of a productive garden that nurtures cultural and ecological growth.
This project, in collaboration with TBA-21, challenges students to explore the concept of a Hortus Conclusus, an enclosed garden, and the transition between architecture and outdoor spaces within Venice’s unique urban fabric. Students will investigate the seamless flow between indoor and outdoor environments, promoting a productive interaction with nature while reflecting on the role such gardens have in urban renewal and sustainability. Our activities will focus on the vibrant neighbourhood of Campo San Lorenzo in Castello, providing a tangible urban context for students to apply and visualise their designs. This studio seeks to inspire a new generation of architects to create integrated, sustainable spaces that enhance community interaction and environmental awareness.
Snøhetta (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈsnøːˌhɛtɑ]) began as a collaborative architectural and landscape workshop, and has remained true to its trans-disciplinary way of thinking since its inception. Our work strives to enhance our sense of surroundings, identity and relationship to others and the physical spaces we inhabit, whether feral or human-made. Museums, products, reindeer observatories, graphics, landscapes and dollhouses get the same care and attention to purpose. Today, Snøhetta has grown to become an internationally renowned practice of architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, product, graphic, digital design and art, with 280 employees of more than thirty different nationalities, and an equal gender distribution. Snøhetta is a place nobody is from, but anyone can go to.
Partner
TBA21–Academy
TBA21–Academy is TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary’s research center fostering a deeper relationship with the Ocean and other bodies of water through the lens of art to inspire care and action. Established in 2011, the Academy has since worked as an incubator for collaborative inquiry, artistic production, and environmental advocacy, catalyzing new forms of knowledge emerging from the exchanges between art, science, policy, and conservation. In 2019, TBA21–Academy opened Ocean Space in Venice, a planetary center that hosts exhibitions and public activities that accelerate critical ocean literacy through the arts. Building on TBA21–Academy’s expansive work, this embassy for the Ocean fosters wonder, engagement and collective action on the most pressing issues facing the Ocean today.
