Venice as a Paradigm

Abstract

The chapter critically reconsiders the methods used to read the urban form and analyses projects that have chosen the city of Venice as the object of study and field of experimental verification, highlighting the value of emptiness and the instrumental role played by urban studies in the design of the city. Venice as a paradigm to be questioned and as a prerequisite for a certain “Venetian” approach to architectural design launched after the Second World War at the IUAV in Venice, reestablished by Giuseppe Samonà. A complex text, an inlay of calli and canals on which Egle Renata Trincanato perfects that hypothesis on the nuclear morphogenesis of Venice. Following the line of research outlined at the IUAV by Samonà and Trincanato after the Second World War, Saverio Muratori conducts his “Studies for a working urban history of Venice.” A group of categories, critically reviewed by the Architecture Group, represent the basis of a design method destined to spread beyond the tight Venetian circle as a distinctive element of a certain “scientific” approach that identifies with the theory of the city in parts.