David Chipperfield Architects Unveils Restoration of Venice’s Procuratie Vecchie

April 7, 2022 Leonardo Zuccaro Marchi KEYWORDS historic preservation / Venice Order Reprints No Comments Architects & FirmsDavid Chipperfield Architects ✕ Image in modal.

The most beautiful cores have always taken a long time to form, according to historian Sigfried Giedion. In Venice, it took 500 years of continuous transformations of both open spaces and the surrounding buildings for Saint Mark’s Square to become a site of celebration of the human scale as we now recognize it today—one of ‘visual acoustics,’ as Le Corbusier put it, attempting to grasp the essence of the concept of public space in Venice. With such perspective, the restoration project of the Procuratie Vecchie (Old Procuracies) by the Milan office of David Chipperfield Architects (DCA) aims to enter the timeless symphony of transformation and renewal that is the city of Venice, contributing a new layer of contemporary depth to the composite legacy of St. Mark’s Square, its heart.

Corte Maruzzi.

Corte Maruzzi. Photo © Alessandra Chemollo

Named after the Procurators of Saint Mark, officials considered second only to that of the Doge in prestige, the Procuratie Vecchie is one of three buildings enclosing Saint Mark’s Square, opposite the Basilica: the 500-foot-long, five story Old Procuracies being the northern wing; the Procuratie Nuove (New Procuracies, 1583 – 1640) the southern wing; and the Procuratie Nuovissime (Newest Procuracies, 1807–1814), also known as the Napoleonic Wing, the western wing. Dating to the first half of the 16th Century, the Old Procuracies portion was designed by, amongst others, architects Mauro Codussi, Bartolomeo Bon, and Jacopo Sansovino, who built upon an earlier damaged structure, making it an example of substitution and stratification from its very conception. The classical language of arches and loggias in which the Procuratie Vecchie were characteristically expressed would later go on to inspire its two later iterations.

Rooftop.

Rooftop. Photo © Alberto Parise

This new intervention leaves the facade untouched, and involved solely the interior of the building, just over 100,000 square feet; and yet, it traces significant social and visual continuities with the public essence of its surrounding location. The deceptively ‘introverted’ project, in fact, not only realizes the ‘internal’ potential of the Procuratie Vecchie, but in doing so also develops the ‘extroverted’ potential of the building to relate to its ‘external’ setting, interacting with the social dimension of St. Mark’s Square with a reciprocity it had been denied by nearly half a millennium of public inaccessibility. Thus, both from within the Procuratie Vecchie and from its rooftop, the onlooker will now be able to gaze at St. Mark’s Square from a whole new range of angles and perspectives, breathing new life into the very heart of Venice.

Auditorium

Auditorium. Photo © Alberto Parise

The Procuratie Vecchie will open its doors to the city by making the third floor into a new space for social interaction, comprising exhibition and event spaces, and an auditorium—mainly connected to the Human Safety Net, a global foundation whose mission is to support people living in vulnerable circumstances, created by the Italian insurance company Assicurazioni Generali: the visionary and ambitious client and owner of the building that envisioned the physical and social transformation of the Venetian Procuratie. The building will also return to being a place of work in a city of tourists and museums, hosting offices on the first and second floor, the importance of which David Chipperfield underlines: “The other aspect of the building that is important is that it’s coming back to becoming a place of work. In many cases, the idea of an office building is rather boring, but I would say that in Venice it’s probably the most important thing to do right now. So, while I share the enthusiasm that this will be open to the public for the first time, I don’t think we should overlook how important it is that we are creating a workplace in the very heart of Venice, and that’s maybe an even more important symbol than opening up more touristic opportunities.”

Restored interiors, Enfilade

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Restored interiors, rooms

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Restored interiors. (1) Photo © Alessandra Chemollo. (2) Photo © Alessandra Chemollo. Click to enlarge.

Faced with the dual identities of the Procuratie Vecchie, both introverted and extroverted, and with the historical complexity of the modifications—practical adaptations and functional negotiations it underwent over the centuries—DCA opted for a series of interventions rather than the single predefined gesture of a genius architect, defined during two years of design and a three-year construction phase. The entire process was developed in close synergy with the cultural and technical knowledge lent by local craftsmen, whose skill and ability in the construction phase proved so discriminant that their absence would have determined a very different outcome. As Chipperfield notes, “That’s what is really charming about working on restoration projects—the incredible engagement of craftsmanship, the close participation in the process, which is what we should expect in all building sites; all construction sites should be like that. That’s one of the joys of projects like that.”

Stairs

Central staircase. Photo © Alberto Parise

Regarding the interventions, DCA adopted a clever, flexible approach that seeks to harmonize the new with the old, in “a delicate balance between conservation and integration,” according to DCA associate director Cristiano Billia. The restoration project involves interventions of conservation, revelation, integration, and renovation. Revelation uncovered, for instance, traces of frescoes (on the second floor), ancient flooring in Venetian terrazzo on the first floor, and juxtapositions of brick wall patterns of different time periods on the third floor. Integration was needed to replace elements where the original ones were damaged and could not be preserved. Renovation of the third floor highlighted the historical traces and material stratification of the building, opening it to a brand new social life connected by a stunning, long promenade of arches connecting the different rooms divided by the seriality of the structural walls. Besides this new horizontal connection, the vertical circulation was reorganized into blocks of wide, open stairs inside the courtyards without affecting the main spaces of the building, in a dialogue between contemporary interventions and existing historical stratifications.

Model showing new vertical circulation.

Model showing new vertical circulation. Image courtesy David Chipperfield Architects

The restoration work also recovered original Venetian materials—such as pastellone (a smooth lime flooring), terrazzo (a monolithic floor decorated with fragments), marmorino (a classic Venetian plaster for internal walling), scialbatura (whitewashing), cocciopesto (very small pieces of tiles mixed with mortar for external walling), and cotto (suitable for coating)—as well as traditional techniques requiring the specialized craftsmanship of local companies and artisans, with the aim of grounding the project in its stratified cultural heritage through a complex process of integration and transformation of the layers that formed it over the course of several hundred years. The technical solutions, as well as those for building services, show a respectful, minimalist approach to the existing structure. With respect to energy sustainability, the building is in line with the requirements for international LEED Silver Core & Shell certification, currently underway.

Building Entrance

Building entrance. Photo © Alberto Parise

Finally, it is worth remembering that the Procuracies also host Carlo Scarpa’s well-known Olivetti store (1957-1958) on the ground floor, where the topic of historical presence and modernism finds its highest expression. A further link between the Venetian Procuracies projects and modernism may be found DCA’s restoration projects in Berlin, such as Mies’ Neue Nationalgalerie (1968, renovated by DCA, 2012-2021) and, in particular, Stüler’s Neues Museum (1859, restored by DCA, 1993-2009). Although radically different from Sansovino’s work, Venice was the museum’s primary reference; so much so that when Chipperfield’s office tackled the German masterpiece, they thought back to Venice as a laboratory for learning a living tradition of repairing, one in which, according to Chipperfield, “there is no radical statement, it’s just about trying to, softly, ‘maintain’ the fabric that is left and give it coherence. Interestingly, our restoration approach for the Neues Museum, which informs our approach to this project, was itself inspired by Venice, so in a sense we’ve come back to where it really began… And where it continued with the restoration project of the Procuratie Vecchie as a respectful and profound dialogue with its slow, historical, socio-spatial, and cultural sedimentation.

Historical Elevation.

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Site Plan.

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Historical Elevation of Piazza San Marco (3). Piazza San Marco site plan (4). Images courtesy David Chipperfield Architects


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Originally posted on: https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/15609-david-chipperfield-architects-unveils-restoration-of-venices-procuratie-vecchie