Examining through Graphics: Inside & Outside Relationships in Venice/ Politecnico Di Milano

INSIDE OUTSID& E RELATIONSHIPS IN VENICE

Examining through Graphical Approach

Politecnico di Milano

School of Architecture, Urban Planning and Construction Engineering

055979 | RESEARCH THEMATIC SEMINAR

Prof. Manganaro Elvio

Prof. Pessoa Pereira Alves Henrique

Inside & Outside Relationships in Venice: Examining through Graphical Approach

Ozturk Aysenur Tugce

A.Y. 2022 - 2023

TITLE OF THE RESEARCH:

Inside Outside Relationships In Venice: Examining through Graphical Approach

QUESTION:

How can graphical reflections disclose inside and outside relationships in Venice?

EXPECTED TO BE OBTAINED FROM THE RESEARCH:

Experimental drawings to create visual communication between the context, situation and the audience.

METHODOLOGY ADOPTED FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF THE RESEARCH:

Examination the inside outside relationship in Venice within the three different disciplines which are painting, movie, map/arch.d. and reflecting the relationships founded in these spesifications through the graphical 2D and 3D visuals.

ABSTRACT

Defining space by dividing it to inside and outside is one of human’s ways to recognize his position in environment. Architecture is created to response to this need for inside/outside spaces. Architecture consist of numerous elements that allow people to discover built spaces and unbuilt spaces. Each architectural element has an effect on the relationships of inside and outside in different scales. And each of them, has an outher impact in big scale, indeed they all have meanings both building scale and also city scale. With this infinite effects of the architectural elements there is a lot of techtonic that each people faces during their daily life. It is an organism that contains an infinite number of spatial relations within the urban fabric.

Being inside and outside is a very relative concept. It can change suddenly. Sometimes it depends on crossing the threshold, sometimes it occurs due to different situations. It depends on where you are, whether you are inside or outside. Architectural elements are sometimes permissive and sometimes masonry here.

Venice is one of the best cities that consist of very unique sprit with the diverse architectonic elements. With its architectonic elements and its own distinctive morphology, the city provides the most intertwined occasions to examine the potential relationships between inside and outside.

The specific ‘filters’ are selected to indicate the inside and outside relationship in Venice: While observing Venice as a city organism, it is cloudlessly obvious that everyone has their impression, their explication, their distinctive way of seeing the Venice in relationship with inside and outside. On account of this ambiguity, the research will be examined “the ones” eyes, who produced works on/in/about Venice and attributed their works and products to society, who are artists and planners. In that way, it is defined particularly from which perspectives the Venice will be grasped. Thanks to this approach, the spectators who will be able to face the graphics that are bringing out during this project with understanding of according to which images they are formed on. Also, owning this approach is permitting to establish a correlation in common between spectators’ eyes on the selected images.

In this research conducted on the changeability, uncertainty and so polysemy of the inside-outisde relationship with the tool of graphical drawings. In general, it is aimed describe relationships with visual expression to the viewer. The research will be phased in three different discipline: painting, movei and architectural drawings. The graphical drawings for examining the circumstances occurs in these three different discipline is created as two and three dimentions. For paintings and architectural drawings the graphics will be faced as two dimensional. For sequences of the movie scenes there will be both two and trhree dimensional drawings.

Selected Works about/at/on/in Venice Outcome: Graphical Drawings

Painting

Movie Book of a Map

Selected Screens:

Selected Scales:

Map of Methodology

Field

Gentile Bellini Miracle of the Relic of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo -c. 1429 – 1507

t Vittorio Zecchin

The Arabian Nights, Wedding of Aladdin -1900s

Morte e Venezia -1971

Studi per una Operante Storia Urbana di Venezia -Muratori Saverio (1910-1973)

Discipline 1

Painting

Encounted paintings have been made in, on, and about Venice, from history to the present. Some of them formed the history, meanwhile some of them is formed from history. Some of them respectfully reflects the urban life of the precise decates while some of emphasizing the feelings of Venice pattern. Within the scope of this research three paintings were selected for examining. Each of them from different era and different art movements.

First painting is Miracle of the Relic of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo, painted by Gentile Bellini, between -c. 1429 – 1507. Bellini is the one of the well known Italian painters during Renaissance period. Bellini lived in Venice and graduated from school of Venice. The painting’s subject is the miracles of a fragment of the True Cross. (Medium: Tempera on Canvas, Dimensions: 323 cm × 430 cm, Location: Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice)

Second painting is The Arabian Nights, Wedding of Aladdin, painted by Vittorio Zecchin in 1900s. Zecchin’s paintings deeply reflects Venetian liberty through art nouveau. He lived and studied in Venice and so effected a lot from the urban pattern and the life inside.

Third painting is Primavera, painted by Parmeggiani Tancredi in 1951. He lived in Venice and Graduated from Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. In 1952, Tancredi signed the manifesto of “Spazialismo” with Deluigi, Vianello, De Toffoli, Guidi, and Burri. So that, this artwork came out during this period. It is the intersection zone of abstractionism, spatialism and Venice.

In this painting, the focus is right bottom of the middle, on the river. The first “inside” ring is the river and the activity in it. Also, the clear blue texture of the river, along with the sky, contrasted with the rest of the painting. The people surrounded the river to watch the ceremony performed in the river. The people who make up the crowd on the pavement and on the bridge constitute the second “inside” situation. The people on the pavement and on the bridge constitute the second “inside” situation. After that, the urban environment forms the third ring and the sky forms the “outside”. Also from another point of view, the people; on the other hand, it forms a transition between the urban fabric and the river.

Gentile Bellini

Miracle of the Relic of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo

-c. 1429 – 1507

This painting leaves the viewer alone with labyrinths just like Venice. The eyes are constantly following the patterns and getting lost in the details. In this picture, the “inside” state is always observed. It’s just that the faces and hair of the women in the painting contrast with the rest of the painting, giving us a tangible and defined space. While patterns could be identified more easily in the mind before, when one looks at the picture for a long time, it becomes blurred and only being “inside” is experienced. But when the eyes are fixed on the faces and hair again, the observer suddenly finds her/ himself outside the maze.

Vittorio Zecchin

The Arabian Nights, Wedding of Aladdin -1900s

Parmeggiani Tancredi Primavera -1951

In this painting, just like Venice urban texture, there are enless labyrinths and a constant state of being inside. While looking at the picture, you can head towards a thousand different directions as if you were wandering through the streets. In addition, the colors used in the painting create fragments. The adventure is experienced layer by layer, layer upon layer; of being inside.

Discipline 2

Movie

Movie is one of the best mediums that tells us that the situations of being inside and outside are constantly changing. It reflects life. In daily life, we are relatively in and out of spaces. Movie as a medium, also allow us to understand and observe the use of spaces within them and the relationships between spaces.

The reason for selecting Death in Venice precisely, besides the importance of the film for literatur, is that thanks to the film, it allows us to monitor Venice’s inside and outside and follow so many sequences in the scope of inside and outside relationships. Also there is a lot of scenes that are captured inside the buildings. So, we can enter the buildings’ interiors.

Death in Venice, directed by Luchino Visconti, and based on the novel: Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. Also, the movie won a lot of awards such as BAFTA Award, Cannes Film Festival, French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, Nastro d’Argento, Kinema Junpo Award. Further, the movie was examined by so many researchers in different aspects of disciplines.

In this phase, six movie scenes were decided to be examined in sequences. 1-) sea and city relation, 2-)the role of the window in inside and outside relationship, 3-) river and the passage under the building, 4-) the threshold between water-sea and urban fabric 5-) streets and beyond 6-) spaces of a palace

Death in Venice Morte a Venezia -1971

Here the character reaches Venice by sea. The man is first in the sea, outside the borders of Venice. Afterwards, the man crosses the border of the city. The city has taken him in now. The space that was previously defined as outside has now become inside. The man witnesses the urban fabric more and more closely, he is now in the city.

First, the water and the city texture are separated by a border. The character comes to the solid urban texture with sandal. Heis outside the solid urban fabric in the water. He walks over the wooden bridge to set foot in the city from the sandal. At that moment, the man is on the threshold. Neither inside nor outside. On the threshold... Then the man enters the city and is now outside the water, in the urban fabric.

In this scene, we observe a sequence from the street boundary of a palace to its interior. As the character enters to the palace, the consciousness about the relationships of the interiors begins to emerge in minds of spectators. While the character entered the palace, the corridor; common space is seen. At that moment, he is outside of the common living room but inside of the palace. The sequences follows same order, and at the end, the man had the map of interiors.

The character enters the room with all the shutters closed. The room exists at that moment, independently of the place. The man is right in the room. Then, the man opens the shutters and the window. He stops right on the threshold. At that moment, the man feels the sea and the beach. he crosses the threshold and finds himself in the atmosphere outside. With the opening of the window, the interior and exterior become one.

The character goes through the passage. At that time, the man is inside the building’s passage but outside of the others’ lives in the building. While the man is inside the passage, he also comes into contact with the water, he comes into contact with the urban fabric. The man is inside of Venice texture, but outside the building that offers that passage to him.

In this sequence of scenes, the character walks through the narrow street which is one of the specific characteristics of Venice’s urban fabric. The character is in one of the labyrinthine streets that formed the city texture of Venice. The character is on the street, outside the houses. The outer wall formed a border. Only doors and windows are the signals of the lives behind the wall. They are thresholds. They represent the lives behind the wall. They are the mediums of transitions between inside and outside.

Discipline 3

Book of Maps, Architectural Drawings

Studi per una Operante Storia Urbana di Venezia: Documentation of each quarter of the city with plans and photographs. Includes identification of periods of development and characteristic construction types.

At third phase, Studi per una Operante Storia Urbana di Venezia is taken as a basis which contains architectural drawings and maps of Venice. Thanks to this documentations it can be observed different phases of urban development during the different centuries. It is selected that three different scales to examine.

Studi per una Operante Storia Urbana di Venezia

-Muratori Saverio (1910-1973)

An empirical way was followed to understand internal and external relations of one of the island of Venice. It is not ended with an outcome. Still underconstruction. But this phase of research allows us to understand the outherspaces of the buildings and inside of the island in another way.

A building block inside the island was examined. With this architectural drawing, it can be observed the inner spaces of the building block. In this graphical research, The doors of the buildings is taken as the parameter of “inside calculator” And the ways allowed by them was drawn. The dead-end rooms is signed as filled circles. The stairs which could not predictable from streets are signed. It is so obvious that, venice has a really grift structures. And if whole doors could be open one day, there wont be any end point.

The palace is chosen to examine the inside and outside relationship on the scale of the building. Since the ground floor is the floor that best describes the relationship of the building with the outside, the change of the ground floors of the palace over the centuries was taken into consideration.

In this graphical research, it was investigated how the change of interior spaces over the centuries affected the relationship of the building with the outside.

The doors of the buildings is taken as the parameter of “inside calculator”.

PALAZZO BARZIZZA framed: Ground Plans from Sec. XII. till Sec. XX.

inside calculator

path detector

XII. XV. XVIII. XX.

Conclusion

During this research a lot of way of drawings experienced. It was worked on transferring physical states to the audience with visual images and drawings. While drawing graphics as a research tool on reflecting the multiplicity of situations of being inside and outside, many felt but unspoken situations were noticed. In order to make sense of them, the meanings of the lines were examined again. With the difference of a line being dashed and dotted, it was understood how much the meaning that one consciously established in visual expression changed the expression. An attempt was made to establish a common language within the graphics.

INSIDE & OUTSIDE RELATIONSHIPS IN VENICE