competição Venice Lagoon, Novembro 2007, com Luís Isidoro.



2G Venice Lagoon Competition Proposals : desAguar = Luís Isidoro + Rafael Vieira

0208venUS
DESAGUAR A2

1
OF THE NAME AND PRESENTATION

We chose to represent the name of Venice in italian because it seems logical to us to demonstrate it’s linguistic autenticity. And Venezia always seems magical to us, saying we both visited the city long before even knowing we’re going to participate in a competition regarding its enrichment with a urban park, with all concearning this kind of intervention, meaning the erudit and theorical thoughts and envisioned proposals.

Knowing of Venezia and still with its presence longuing in our memory and that we can assure its to perform and contribute even more to its magnificence as city of art and culture that influenced the mediterranean sphere for centuries.

2
PROPOSAL AND INTERVENTION

Three moments were identified as a beginning to the project: Venezia, Murano and Sacca San Mattia, these working as an aproaching scale to the park to be deployed frome the city, the isles and, finally, our island. These physical entities coexist in a bigger entity that is the lagoon that is not to be left untouched, without reflection.

We encountered some iconic relations between the geografic entities and objects of the day to day. This iconic relations evolved into iconic studies in wich the form of Venezia appeared as a fish, Murano islands as a face and Sacca San Mattia as a punch. The fish, the face and the punch, as icons, work as a jump start to the whole project of the Venezia Park Lagoon, the fish evoking the past of venetian people as traders and sea captains, the face remembering the masks universally renowed and the punch as a dynamic manifest of the project to come.

The first step was to creat an organism, an organic infraestructure that could connect and interligate both the Lagoon Park wih Murano, with Venice, with venezian airport and with lagoon istself. This works as an benefic organism, that appeared form several ideas and serves as a front of the park to the city and congregates the vast necessary building program that is expected.

The organism appeared from both two ideas: the mask and the hands. The mask offers the image of a fluid and fragile surface that covers the face, thus suggesting that a giant mask could have fallen into Sacca San Mattia and the voids formed by the eyes and mouth work as courtyards. The hands, with all its infinite positions, when they embrace, suggest a structure that could hold several courses between the fingers.

The mask and the hands ideas combined formed the organism, applied to the place and using some old existing infrastructure to be left open, like the football fields. The organism uses these voids to house several different programs, in what the first one – the space of the first football field – works as the Lagoon Park Lobby with a Iconic Tower working as a landmark to the park itself and aproaching to the churches towers of Murano and Venezia. The second void, works as Lagoon Square, and with the first one serves as an balance to the Saint Marcus Square in Venezia.
The organism its an new topography, evolving routes of green on its top and houses cultural facilities and visitors program underneath. Its branches stretch into the park ground choosing different ways to mark routes from the organims and into different programs that happen in the park, like the Lagoon and Venezia Musem, the Contemporay Art Museum, the folies, the theatres, the workshops, the sports facilities and the pier that connects the park with bith Venezia and the venezian airport.

The organism also consolidates the island of Sacca San Mattia boundaries, in wich one old branch in the middle east side works as a pier and facilities to the visitors to the park and lagoon.

The Next to the Organism theres a intricate building serving as a hotel and habitat to visitors to the park and Murano. The Contemporary Art Museum evolved from the idea of a package, joking with the idea of a gift of art given to another one and next to it, theres a flutuable stage using the idea of the Theatre of the World by the architect Aldo Rossi.

The park facilities are complete with a youth hostel, meditation spaces and folies. The folies (you cubes) structures exist in all around the park and work as restplaces and meditation spaces. The youth hostel exists over water right side to a boardwalk that prolongs from the park deep into the lagoon.

To the South a new island was formed, the Nuova Murano island, prolonging the urban limits to the South and aproaching Murano to Venezia. It holds a mixed program consisting on habitats to workers of Venezia and Murano and a habitat to the visitors of the Biennale, theres also a large array of public services and commerce, showing a complete city and not only as a habitation neighbourhood, testing different kinds of the old venice mesh, creating different kinds of hierarquies like the road / square (public universe) versus the private spaces like courtyards and pateos (private universe).

The lagoon portable prototypes are floating structures that can be taked to anywhere into the lagoon, it uses no mechanic engines and serves both as compact temporary habitat and as a observation point to the fauna, flora and as an astronomical observatory. These portable strucutres resemble the old kind of boats named coracles and rest in some designated lagoon portable infraestrutures all around the lagoon.

The Lagoon program consists in a definition of large array courses around the lagoon, the tidal power plant to use thepossibilites of extracting energy form the tidal waves and the lagoon portable prototypes, the coracle.

Two matterials approaches were studied with different objectives: the 'Murano Glass' pannel uses the wastes of the murano glass that can be found at the ground of the Sacca San Mattia, recycling it to a building product to be used with different results. The ‘Murano Brick’ uses the prime material of Venezia and its to be used vastly in the park paving the courses, stages and some buildings, thus remembering the old pavement and construction of Venezia.

3
CONCLUSION

memory of venezia
its a simple gesture, to stretch the hand and just let it fall into the ground
revealing courses between the fingers
the streets of the city that wants to grow and touch veneziaseeing bodies growing from the dance of the water

Lisboa, November 2007