Venice 24

Location
Venice, Italy

Year
2024

Program
Urban Regeneration

Team Leaders
Reinier de Graaf (Partner, OMA)
Hans Larsson (Associate, OMA)
Alex Retegan (Editorial Manager, OMA)

Team
Federico Bortot (Delft University of Technology, Netherlands)
Xuyyuan Guo (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
Ilia Aladov (MARCH Moscow School of Architecture, Russia)
Zijun Wang (SCI-Arc – Southern California Institute of Architecture, USA)
Hei Lam William Li (University College London, UK)
Jingyi Liu (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Ekaterina Pestriakova (Technical University of Munich, Germany)
Mehak Srivastava (Syracuse University, USA)
Claudia Gueli (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Chunjie Wang (SCI-Arc – Southern California Institute of Architecture, USA)
Lixu Zhang (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Muchun Yang (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Yi Zhang (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Ignacio Ugarte (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Louisa Weeren (HafenCity University, Germany)
Ana Plesa (The University of Manchester, UK)

Project
In 1807, by the order of Napoleon, the monasteries of Sant’Antonio, San Domenico, and San Nicolò in Venice’s Castello neighborhood were razed to the ground to make room for a public garden. The project was part of a national campaign initiated by the French Emperor to promote a healthy city life across Italy.

The Giardini in Venice opened to the public in 1812. Not long after, however, it fell into disrepair. In 1887, following Italy’s independence, the Giardini found a new purpose: It hosted the first National Exhibition dedicated to art. The event turned out a great public success and the city decided to build a permanent venue for exhibitions and enclose 42 thousand square meters of its 60 thousand square meters of public space. National pavilions were added in the years to come: Belgium (1907), Hungary (1909), Germany (1909), Great Britain (1909), France (1912), The Netherlands (1912), and Russia (1914). More followed in the 1930s and again after the WWII.

The Giardini’s last pavilion was built in 1987 by Australia. Today, out of the 29 pavilions, 18 represent Europe, five the Americas, three Asia and one Africa. Given the amount of free space left, there is little prospect that other countries will be squeezed in in the future. But should they even, at a time when art and architecture are globalized phenomena, and architects and artists are perpetual migrants? The world in the Giardini is hardly the world of 2024. The time has come to let this nation building project go. Like Napoleon, let us level the vestiges of a past that doesn’t let us move forward freely, and give this piece of the city a new lease of life. What should it be?