Casa D'Acqua

Evolving from an abstracted reading of the campo and the context of Venice the project engages with and reveals the 'hidden’ Venice and the closed nature of the Arsenale as a secret space floating in the lagoon. This project is philosophically embedded in Venetian architecture, which is now re-deployed in a layered sequence of spaces and connections.

Casa D’Acqua forms a new gateway to Venice. It opens the lagoon to the city by breaching the massive wall of the old military base of the Arsenale, straddling this key water channel by an extruded public palazzo and inhabited wall. Multiple programmes including a maritime museum, and a centre for oceanic studies, in combination with a new vaporetto route, reveals the historic heart of the city.\nThe thesis developed through extensive experimentation in drawing and model-making: analogue and digital. Abstractions of venetian buildings, conceptual studies and the reinterpretation of the city influenced the direction and research. The chosen site holds a disused boat yard and fragments of naval buildings, parts of which are retained in the project.\nThe campo as the fundamental DNA of Venice, the section of the building as an elevated palazzo, and the material and detail references to the 'hidden forest', re-structure and spatially figure a new urban intervention, making explicit what is implicit in Venetian architecture. The material palette, the way light filters through the building is inspired by the spaces and screens of Venetian palazzos. This sense of reflected light and the passing of time is key to how the building was designed. Key aspects of environmental sustainability are considered through maximising natural ventilation, harvesting energy through water source heat pumps, the extensive use of solar panels, and the incorporation of water purifying plant are all part of a wider global sense of addressing the climate emergency. \nAt the centre of the building is a public belvedere which connects across the canale, paralleling the display: a flotilla of historical vessel models, with a full size galley located centrally to capture the peak of Venetian naval architecture. The recalled tracery of Venetian Palazzo screens act as both a structural idea and cast shadows across this vessel like the triangulated early maps of the oceans to be explored by the expanding Venetian empire. Seen from below, under the hull, are the contemporary quotidian Venetian vessels, which pass through this new gateway.