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Cultural Centre inside an ancient crane

description
Outline proposal, detailed proposal, final proposal, artistic supervision renovation of a XIX century crane in the Arsenale of Venice in a cultural centre.

The Porta Nuova Tower – located at the water entrance on the north side of the dock of the Novissima Arsenale of Venice – dates from the first half of XIX century. It was designed and built for masting vessels, but quickly fell into disuse because of the changing technologies of naval engineering.

The aim of the project – winner of the design competition launched in 2006 by the Arsenale di Venezia Spa – was to ensure the conservation and enhancement of the spatiality of the historic building, in unison with the needs arising from the insertion of new features to turn it into a cultural center.

The building is tripartite in its interior. On the ground floor, we organized spaces for the reception and the conference rooms. On the first floor, we created an exhibition area. Different levels are provided for the mezzanine offices. We first recognized and then interpreted the unity and continuity of the vertical space that starts from the first floor, while taking into consideration the typological and structural characteristics of this kind of industrial building. The new distribution of the partitions and volumes, necessary for hosting the main systems equipment, has them configured as separate items and always recognizable in contrast to the original bricked structures. The lift systems are always volumetrically independent of the existing walls. The materials used (exposed concrete, fiber cement panels to the floor, sheets of waxed cor-ten steel) always converse with the preexisting ones by the contrast in texture and pattern.