Il Museo Nascosto.
Archiving the Forgone Foreground of Venice. Ethan Gordan Kennedy
Contact. ethan.kennedy123@live.co.uk
Glasgow Based Part 2 Architectural Assistant. *All images within this submission are by author.
Contents. Contents. Introduction. Location and Site Plan. Description of Brief. Site Location and Context. Project Overview.
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Gallery. Overview. Study of Gondola Repair Yard. Plans. Elevation. Development Model.
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Museum. Overview. Study of Venetian Urban Form. Study of Venetian Architetural Form. Layering of Venetian Form. Plans. Sections. Visuals. Development Model.
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Appendix.
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The Foregone Foreground of Venice. Introduction.
The locals of Venice feel they are losing their voice. The reality of their city goes unseen beneath layers of mass tourism and imagined nostalgia. Their home which should act as the background to their lives has been brought to the fore. The true foreground of Venice, the narratives of its use and of the people who inhabit it, has been forgone in favour of painted and photographed images of ancient canals and weathered architecture. The world treats Venice as a capsule of the past and too often chooses to ignore the present state and true life of the city that remains somehow hidden in plain sight. If the city of Venice is seen as the city of conservation, there must be a way to conserve the lost voices of its people. The project proposes an archive and exhibition to the city that gathers the city’s unseen narratives and exhibits them in a place that is ‘of Venice’. In this way the project aims to restore the foreground of Venice over the background of its architecture and bring its unseen narratives to light.
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Venice, The Lagoon City. Location and Site Plan.
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The Process of Archiving Venice. Description of Brief.
The project proposes a process in which to archive the unseen narratives of the city. Temporary exhibitions are built by students of architecture at the IUAV university. These are sent into the city and set up as spaces for residents to ‘deposit’ their stories through recordings, writing, photographs and objects. These are then brought to a Gallery space for exhibition prior to their delivery to the final Museum and archival site. The museum grows with age as its exhibitions change and expand to provide a space that represents the true foreground of the city.
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1. Narratives Unfold. 2. Narratives Collected. 3. Narratives Exhibited. 4. Narratives Archived.
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1. Santa Marta. A relatively recent development of the 19th Century, this residential area sits considerably higher than the rest of Venice and is often untouched during the acqua alta or high tides of the winter seasons. 2. Cotonificio, IUAV. A former cotton mill from the late 19th century that has since been converted into the primary building of the architecture department of the IUAV university. 3. Terese, IUAV. Previously a religious convent from the 17th century, this building complex surrounds a central cloister and is now used as teaching space for IUAV. 4. Santa Maria Maggiore. A former convent from the 15 century now houses the Prison of Santa Maria Maggiore across the northern canal of the site. The chosen site lies along the boundary of the old and the new of Venice. The project sits adjacent to the main bridge connecting one of the most recently developed areas of Venice, Santa Marta, to the city. The chosen context helps to ground the project and establish a temporal connection to the city in which the passage of time can root the building into its context as it grows with age.
A Bridge Between the Old and the New. Site Location and Context.
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Il Museo Nascosto. Museum of the Unseen.
The collection of the Museum is built up over time as new exhibits are created from objects, photos, art and stories submitted by the people of Venice. These exhibits archive the unseen foreground of Venice, the everyday life of the city that lies hidden in plain sight. Just as the museum is built up over time as it fills with displays, the building too weathers and becomes more a part of its context, slowly wearing away like the architecture of Venice against the waters of the lagoon.
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Il Laboratorio. The Workshop.
The previous boat sheds of the site have become workshops in which students of architecture at IUAV can undergo classes designing and building the temporary exhibitions that will gather the stories of the city.
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Il Galleria Nascosto. Gallery of the Unseen.
An ever-changing gallery that exhibits the gathered stories of Venice prior to their archiving at the museum. The building ages through its constant use and reuse in which spaces and walls shift to accommodate new exhibitions, marking the building over time.
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Il Galleria Nascosto. A Place of Production.
The gallery is located on the site of an old repair yard across the canal from the museum site. The site lay mainly undeveloped with open space and simple sheds for storing ships. The bounding wall of the site was a mixture of brick and timber providing a degree of privacy and security to the yard, the buildings were much the same with the addition of worn metal panels and sheets. This material palate is common in the many small shipyards in Venice, the most famous of which being the gondola repair yard ‘Squero di San Trovaso’. An architectural study of this Gondola repair yard was carried out to begin to understand the properties and characteristics of these sites found throughout the city. This study informed the design of the gallery as a space of ‘production’ in which exhibits are collected and curated prior to their delivery to the archive. This production and reuse of spaces within the building wears away and weathers the gallery, setting it into its site. The markings and abrasions of its use act as a continuation of the buildings design as it becomes more like the old and worn shipyards of Venice.
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The Repair Yard of Venice. A Study of the Gondola Repair Yard.
The Gondola Repair Yard Squero di San Trovaso is the last remaining yard that works with the ancient Venetian Gondolas. Despite handling much more expensive goods, the yard itself appears as any other. A scattering of timber and tools are strewn across the stone base which spills out onto the Rio de S. Travaso canal. Patrons of the many bakari (Venetian bars) watch the work of the yard as they lean against the canal wall opposite the site with their lunches and aperitivi. 1. Roof. Just like the Gondola’s themselves, the repair yard is in a constant state of maintenance. Weathered materials sit alongside the new as they are slowly replaced as needed. This leads to a fragmented quality to the yard that is in constant use.
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2. Wall. The wall of the repair shed consists of multiple brick columns providing structure and support for the roof, with timber panelling between. The timber has darkened through its exposure to the saturated air of Venice and the high tides that come in the winter seasons. 3. Window. The repair shed often requires strong ventilation due to the frequent use of various paints and varnishes. This ventilation is achieved through large openable timber shutters on the front faรงade. 4. Floor. There is a clear transition from the built form of the repair yard to the adjacent canal as the ground slopes down and beneath the surface of the water. The water encroaches on the site and enters and recedes with the tide, bringing with it deliveries, gondolas and a slowly growing layer of moss and algae.
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5. ‘The Alley’ Exhibit. This small exhibition room adjoins the residential building next to the site. The external wall of the building is retained and acts as the main exhibit wall of the room. A skylight above gives views up the side of the building recreating the setting of an alley in the city.
Ground Floor Plan.
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1. Reception 2. External Delivery Walkway 3. WCs 4. Exhibit Room 1 5. ‘The Alley’ Exhibit 6. Exhibit Hall 7. Storage 8. Staff Room 9. Staff Entrance
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10. Flexible Exhibit Room. This exhibition room makes use of moving walls to provide a flexible display space that can adjust to the various exhibitions it will hold. The movement of the walls follow gestural movements of the boatyards of Venice using a ceiling mounted rail system. A double layered terrazzo floor is scored through the movement of these wall inscribing the story of the buildings use over time.
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10. Flexible Exhibit Room 11. External Walkway 12. Office
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Gallery Section.
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Development Model.
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Il Museo Nascosto. An Archive of the City.
The museum aims to create a setting that is ‘of Venice’, a space suitable for the telling of the all too often untold stories of the city. If the city sets the background to the everyday narratives of Venice, then the museum aims to create this same background to their exhibition. The creation of this Venetian background comes through a process of analysis and application in which the city is taken at its urban and architectural scale and compressed and layered onto the chosen site. This approach creates a dense distillation of the city that is irregular and imperfect, almost chaotic, much in the same way the city presents itself now as an amalgamation of streets, canals and buildings spilling over and into each other. These imperfect forms and connections are given architectural form and produce the spaces of the museum that overlap and encroach on one another creating the backdrop to the narratives of the city to be archived and retold. However, it is only through the addition of the foreground that the museum can truly begin to represent the unseen of Venice. The museum exists in a constant state of change as it grows as an archive of the city. The spaces develop over time through the addition of new exhibitions and the aging of the existing that over time become a part of the building.
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1. Chiesa Della Madonna Dell’Orto. The Church Cloister. The Chiesa Della Madonna Dell ‘Orto is an example of a common order of spaces in Venice. From the river there is a sequence of open spaces that go from the public to the private and protected. The Church building itself acts as mediator between the public square along the canal and the intimate cloister of the church courtyard. 2. Campo San Giacomo Dell’Orio. The Public Campo. The Campos of Venice are approached across bridges and through narrow alleys and as they open themselves up to the traveller, they provide a space to breath within the city. They balance out the almost claustrophobic nature of the city’s streets and they provide a place of orientation. In a city so easy to lose your sense of direction, the Campo hidden just around the corner lets you find yourself. 3. Mercato Di Rialto. The Public Market. The Mercato di Rialto provides a number of covered and uncovered spaces that host a daily market as well as events throughout the year. There is a hierarchy of spaces ranging from the more exposed alongside the Grande Canal to the more tucked away spaces behind the market building adjacent to the smaller canal running past the market.
The urban morphology of Venice was analysed with a focus on three scales of urban space that present themselves within the city; the church cloister, the campo, and the public market. Each of these examples demonstrate a sequence of spatial arrangements that are distinctly Venetian and can be applied to the site.
Understanding Venice. Study of Venetian Urban Form.
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1. IUAV Ex Cotonificio. A converted cotton mill in Dorsoduro which now acts as the main architecture building for the IUAV university. The design of the building was decided through competition. 2. Fondaco Dei Tedeschi. The former headquarters of the German merchants in Venice has been renovated by OMA and now acts as a high end department store. 3. Fondazione Querini Stampalia. A public library of the city with many architectural renovations including a tidal garden by Carlo Scarpa. The original library has been expanded through the addition of adjacent buildings to its plan. 4. Gallerie Dell’Academia. A large gallery of the city located besides the Academia bridge across the Grande Canal with renovations by architects including Carlo Scarpa. 5. Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The former residence of the renowned art collector now serves as a gallery to exhibit her collection. The former rooms of the house act as exhibition space.
A study and abstraction of selected buildings was carried out to gain an understanding of Venetian architectural form and create an architectural palette to apply to the site. The buildings selected represent a meeting of the contemporary and traditional within Venice: renovated or reused buildings that tie together the past with the present. This relationship with time is key to the museum which aims to create an aging archive of the city.
Abstracting Venice.
Study of Venetian Architectural Form.
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The abstractions of Venetian architecture were taken, scaled, and layered upon the site with reference to the spatial forms identified in the urban analysis. The lines and forms of the buildings were pulled apart and applied to the site through a process of collage and repeated redrawing. This process produced a disjointed composition of overlapping lines and geometries that begins to resemble architectural form. The individual fragmented elements begin to read as a unified whole just as the city’s disorganised clustering of buildings reads as a unified urban fabric. This rough collage was then rationalised into the design of the museum. *See appendix for development drawings.
Condensing Venice. Layering of Venetian Forms.
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Ground Floor Plan.
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1. Entrance Square 2. Reception 3. Bar/Cafe 4. Staff Room 5. ‘The Arches’ 6. Projection Room 7. ‘The Storylines’ 8. Exhibition Void 9. ‘The Cloister’
10. Postcard Room 11. ‘The Bookstore’ 12. Newspaper Archive 13. Courtyard Room 14. ‘Untold Architecture’ 15. ‘The Store’ 16. Workshop 17. Teaching Room 18. Exhibition/Boat Store
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First Floor Plan.
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1. ‘Venetian Wall’ Terrace 2. Balconied Exhibition 3. ‘The Arches’ 4. ‘The Storylines’ 5. Exhibition Void 6. ‘The Cloister’
7. ‘The Library’ 8. Newspaper Archive 9. External Walkway 10. ‘Untold Architecture’ 11. ‘The Store’ Terrace 12. ‘The Store’
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Second Floor Plan.
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1. Balconied Exhibition 2. ‘The Arches’ 3. ‘The Storylines’ 4. Exhibition Void
5. ‘The Cloister’ 6. ‘The Cloister’ Terrace 7. ‘Voice of Venice’ 8. ‘The Store’
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Roof Plan.
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Museum Long Section.
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Museum Short Section.
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Museum Perspective Section.
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Entrance Square.
An Open Entrance to the Site.
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Inner Courtyard.
A Protected Courtyard within the Site.
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The Entrance.
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The museum is entered through a small open square along the canal. The space mediates between the public of the city and the more private spaces of the museum.
The Canal.
The previous water basin of the boat shed is extended deeper into the site to create an artificial canal to better connect the building to the city. This also helps accommodate the delivery and departure of new exhibitions.
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The Arches.
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The Arches create the spine of the building and act as a primary exhibition space across all three levels of the museum.
The Cloister.
The cloister extends upwards through the museum connecting the ‘Library’, ‘Bookstore’ and ‘Voices of Venice’. The Voices are presented as small rooms atop the cloister that play recordings of stories submitted to the museum. This create a constant hum of noise in the Cloister that encourage exploration up through the building.
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The Storylines.
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The Storylines are composed of hanging screens with projections of video and images submitted by Venetians. The screens are supported by beams that intersect a perforated feature wall. Through this the perforations in the wall give glimpses into the narratives of the city.
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The Store.
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The store holds a collection of objects relating to the city in its winding array of spaces. It acts as both a ‘store’ of found objects and as a representation of the ‘stores’ and shops found in Venice that provide income to so many local Venetians.
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The Courtyard.
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The courtyard acts as an external connection of the various spaces of the Museum, it also provides a place to exhibit displays externally. Over time the courtyard will change as it ages and takes on the defining characteristics of its site.
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Development Model.
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