Parking in Venice
Location: Piazza Di Laguna, Venice, Italy
Client: The Municipality of Venice
Team: Stig L. Andersson, Flemming Rafn Thomsen, Thomas Kock, Katrine Sandstrøm, Salka Kudsk, Ulla Hornsyld, Friedemann Rüter
Collaborators: HLT, Autonome Forme, Rambøll
Design Phase: 2007
Area: 40.000 m²
The Piazza Di Laguna is located in the northern outskirts of Venice towards the sea. The area faces a complete transformation that includes construction of a large underground carpark, railway traffic, and the optimizing of traffic connections. In the alteration of the area SLA teamed up with Henning Larsen Architects and Autonome Forme of Italy to compete for the creation a new and complex urban space in the exquisite city of Canals. To encounter a historical and architectural city of wonders, let untouched by the age of Modernism, raises respect and takes courage.
The piazza functions as a portal of the city while constituting a crossing zone for different traffic flows of people passing back and forth from the centre. This enables the ground to form a new and alternative situation of arriving in the city, to generate new interpersonal encounters, and to add an architectural landmark. SLA made an effort to interpret the dense and labyrinthine architecture of Venice and to apply the structures in the open and polygonal area. -Hence creating a unique urban landscape with multiple modes of use.
The final proposed project if the team included a striking landmark consisting of a sculptural and crystalline tower building towards the north. The back of the edifice has the shape of a stair-like ascent that offers an exclusive view of the skyline, the lagoon and the distant Dolomites. The front of the tall structure consists of perforated steel and LED-lights creating luminous Venetian patterns over the glass walls.
Below the tower a new and varied vegetated area takes shape between old trees and worn-out railway tracks. Tall poles with distinct light stages and accentuates the different fragments of Nature and the movements of the wind. As something completely new in Venice a green urbanism is born that allows various fields of greenery to spread around the central space.
Piazza Di Laguna takes the shape of a scenic and open space that gains its focus from the surrounding green strokes, from the passers-by and from the grand stairs. The surface of the piazza encloses flickering constellations of LED-lights that change character through the day. And it is contoured in a way that rainwater is collected in small decorative mirror planes, reflecting the sun and the different urban components. Meanwhile surfaces of rubber and differing plateaus give shape to hotspots for relaxing stays and interactions. The many corresponding elements and crossing flows establish an open and complex urban landscape that enables free patterns of movement for traffic as well as serving social and aesthetic purposes.
