lorettabosence:

“One morning in 1961 at the Querini Stampalia, I asked him to keep water outside the palace… He looked at me and after a pause he said: “Inside, inside! Water must be inside, like everywhere in the city. We just need to control and use it as a shining and reflecting substance. You will see the light reflections on the yellow and purple stuccos on the ceiling. That is so gorgeous!”

– Giuseppe Mazzariol, director of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, recalls Carlo Scarpa’s attitude to the creation of the museum space in the centre of Venice.

When I arrived at the Fondazione one afternoon last week, the tide was rising and canal water was slowly infiltrating the dusty channels cast into the museums interior, making it’s way through round holes cut into the walls. The steel grilled ‘watergate’ in the museums facade is permanently submerged and the sound of water lapping against stone inside the corridor and it’s cooling effect makes the space uniquely beautiful, neither interior nor exterior.

In the garden to the rear there is a beautiful continuity of form and material from the inside spaces.

I think Scarpa’s design and many of the older buildings in Venice offer a positive glimpse of future opportunities for living in cities threatened by rising water levels.