Rethinking What Exists

Architecture builds the city in detail. Space, whether urban, architectural or landscape, arouses such intense sensations and feelings that it inspires intellect and reason. However, those who experience the city of the present are often unaware of the archaeological, artistic and architectural heritage it possesses, and the need to consider the places and architecture of the historic city as historical-material-environmental permanences is becoming increasingly urgent.

Significant is the case of the former Church of San Lorenzo di Castello in Venice, which still stands today in its majestic grandeur; a place evocative of past events, in which echoes of successive generations and memories of splendours now faded remain. In fact, over time it has lost its formal and functional essentiality, thus becoming emblematic of a critical condition that often involves historical and especially religious buildings.

The uniqueness of this space also inspired the architect Renzo Piano in 1984, who created the temporary installation for Luigi Nono’s Prometheus, a musical work recently revived on its 40th anniversary.

The increasingly evident phenomena of material decay and static instability made it necessary to carry out some preliminary investigations prior to consolidation and restoration work recently realized to reopen the building to the city as Ocean Space, a global center presenting exhibitions, installations, research and public programs to promote critical literacy on the Ocean and environmental protection through the arts promoted by the TBA21 Academy.

This, then, is the meaning of ‘rethinking what exists’: to give back its own modernity to a building anachronistically at odds with its real belonging to contemporaneity, demonstrating the need for a consistent change to survive in time and to return to fulfil a noble task that is now earthly, no longer spiritual.

The theme that manifests itself in its contemporary paradox, in a city like Venice - that is the essence of paradox - is today a necessity and primarily an opportunity: to build to preserve. The real contradiction of conservation, or rather of memory, is that it needs to change, just as it needs to repeat itself in order to be preserved.