Studio Details

Location
Venice, Italy

Date
3-14th July, 2023

Studio Directors in Venice
Jette Hoppe (director, Snøhetta)
Gumji Kang (architect, Snøhetta)
Jules Gallissian (architect urbanist, Snøhetta)

Studio Project
Buildings for the Water’s Edge

Field Trips and Site Visits
A kayaking tour to Isola di Campalto in the Venetian lagoon
Venice Architecture Biennale

Studio Project

“There is a glorious City in the Sea. The Sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, Ebbing and flowing; and the salt sea-weed Clings to the marble of her palaces. No track of men, no footsteps to and fro, Lead to her gates. The path lies o’er the Sea, Invisible; and from the land we went, As to a floating City – steering in, And gliding up her streets as in a dream…”
– Samuel Rogers

Snøhetta is interested in exploring the past, present and future of space, and providing a place of connection in both a local and global context. In collaboration with TBA-21, we will seek to explore the intersection between art and architecture, and how architecture can be integrated with art. Further to this, the studio will consider Venice’s environmental and social fragility through a series of discussions and explorations.

We would like to invite students to explore an architectural response to the past; remembering the vital parts, whilst acknowledging the changing nature of the city to consider both local and global audiences. We will explore various techniques and methodologies to unveil the site’s conditions and understand various ways to gain new perspectives to the site context.

Students will explore architectural solutions to these issues by thinking about the future of production in Venice without being bound by scale, typology or whether the space should be new, existing or a transformation. The proposal must, however, follow two basic constraints:

1. The space should host a function that produces/manufactures a product/s or services. 

2. The space should give something back to the city

Throughout the studio, students will formulate and depict individual perspectives and visions to answer questions at the core of the topic. Is there a way to integrate a notion of industry and production in our cities? If so could that be a driver to create more awareness of the physical implications capitalism has on the built environment? Can these spaces be reintegrated to deliver a more diverse notion of city? Venice will act as a backdrop to mould and form part of the process, extending beyond our discussion of architectural discourse to imagine a space for the future of production – Venice not as a museum city but as an ecosystem of functions.

To test these premises the Studio will focus on the neighbourhood around Campo San Lorenzo in Castello.

Snøhetta

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.

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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.

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