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Yona Friedman

Venezia Nuova

The old city of Venice seems to be condemned. Its rehabilitation costs more than the money effectively raised. On the other hand, the ongoing decay of the town is an inestimable loss.
How to save Venice? Not only the important monuments, but the living city.
Not simply Venice, but the Venetians.
Venice is practically all built up. Its unique quality of a cultural treasure makes impossible its growth, otherwise than at the mainland. But Mestre is not Venice…
There could be another solution to assure the city’s growth: to build over the lagoon, at sites not deteriorating the cityscape.
The technique of the “ville spatiale”, based on space-frame structures supported by widely spaced pillar-towers (an idea on which I was working for about 50 years) could be both the technical and the aesthetic answer. My first proposal of Venezia Nuova dates from 1969 –
A “ville spatiale” overt the lagoon, and a “bridge-town” over the bridge linking Venice to the mainland could be the appropriate extension. Residential neighborhoods over water, like as many marines, an inhabited bridge forming a shopping street, a “merceria” containing also offices, institutions: a sort of Champs-Elysées on the lagoon, corresponds, in a new form to the spirit of the old city.
This proposal would keep intact the water surface under the new extensions, continuing thus the waterways to serve the whole city, both old and new –
I was trying to present in a few intentionally not only technical drawings a suggestive image of that Venezia Nuova.
— Yona Friedman

Organized by
CCA Kitakyushu
Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa

Venue
Courtyard of Galleria of Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa / In Piazza San Marco, and Riva degli Schiavoni

This post is also available in: Japanese