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Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination.

LCV. Law-Court offices in Venice, Italy by C+S Architects

 
December 19th, 2012 by Sumit Singhal

Article source: C+S Architects

Inhabited infrastructure

The project is a winning entry of an international competition. The building is a graft in the complexity of the Venetian urban system facing Piazzale Roma, the car-entrance space to the city of Venice. At the same time it becomes the ‘infrastructure’ which brings an existing 19th century complex factory (Ex-Manifattura Tabacchi) to a contemporary use: in fact it houses the technological systems  serving the whole.

Image Courtesy Pietro Savorelli

  • Architects: C+S Architects
  • Project: LCV. Law-Court offices
  • Location: Venice, Italy
  • Architects: Carlo Cappai, Maria Alessandra Segantini
  • Design Team: Davide Testi, Barbara Acciari, Monica Moro
  • Masterplan: C+S Architects, Studio CM, Technimont spa
  • Detailed, Structural and Plant Engineering: Technimont, Studio Greggio, Progin
  • Client: Comune di Venezia
  • Built area: 6.916 m² (gross)
  • Competition: March 1999
  • Design phase: September 1999-February 2002
  • Construction phase (beginning and ending month, year): September 2002-June 2012
  • Photographers: Alessandra Bello, Pietro Savorelli

Image Courtesy Pietro Savorelli

The dimension of the building is measured on the huge void of Piazzale Roma facing the bridge of Santiago Calatrava, on the opposite side.

Image Courtesy Pietro Savorelli

A huge, five level high space acts as a ‘urban entrance’ enlightened by the roof as all the ex-industrial existing buildings. This vertical inner space,  opened to free entrance during the day, will house, on the ground level, the commercial services which will allow to improve and give back the citizen a big public space, functioning also as an entrance to the sequence of public spaces which will be regained by the future restoration of the existing buildings.

Image Courtesy Alessandra Bello

The new volume has a simple, archetypical, compact shape, resulting from the manipulation of the Venetian industrial building typology and the connection to the skyline of the huge parking lots.

Image Courtesy Pietro Savorelli

A five meter long cantiliver on Piazzale Roma becomes the entrance: a huge shadow which attracts the fluxes of people horizontally in the new urban system and vertically along either a linear stair or elevators which distributes to all the levels. The linear stair is designed parallel to the elevation facing the parking building San Marco, letting us to design that elevation as a punctuation of small windows designing a special natural light in the inside.

Image Courtesy Pietro Savorelli

The material of the building is a preoxidated type of TECU copper. Copper in Venice is the material with which all the institutional (religious and laic) buildings’ roofs are built with. In this projects, materiality and form become a metaphor representing institution: the house of justice is a big monomateric roof which welcome the citizens inside an enlightened space.

Image Courtesy Alessandra Bello

We always work with materiality and light, instigating, with pro-oxidation, the idea of subtracting material from surfaces and activationg them with light, which is what time does. Working with the idea of ‘time’ is archetypical in Venice.

Image Courtesy Pietro Savorelli

Image Courtesy Alessandra Bello

Image Courtesy Alessandra Bello

Image Courtesy Pietro Savorelli

Image Courtesy Alessandra Bello

Image Courtesy Alessandra Bello

Image Courtesy Pietro Savorelli

Image Courtesy Alessandra Bello

Image Courtesy Pietro Savorelli

Image Courtesy Pietro Savorelli

Image Courtesy Pietro Savorelli

Image Courtesy Alessandra Bello

Image Courtesy Alessandra Bello

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Categories: Building, Offices




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