Learning from Venice. A look through the kaleidoscope

Venice is a very special city, the dream and the nightmare of every architect. The dream, because it is a completely designed city: Even the land on which it stands is the result of design thinking. The nightmare, because it is so beautiful, that being able to compete with it, is just a mirage. Yet, Venice is not a city made by architects. Or rather, alongside some famous works (by Sansovino or Palladio, just to mention two celebrated names), there is a lot of “anonymous” Venetian architecture and the city as a whole prevails on every single building. Venice is «[…] a great respectable work of the power of gathered men, a splendid monument, not a by a master, but by a people», as Goethe wrote. That’s probably why there seems to be a kind of curse in Venice, especially towards modern and contemporary architecture: Many celebrated masters have loved it, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Le Corbusier, from Louis Kahn to Rafael Moneo, and few of them have achieved to realize their projects.