The ancient city of Venice, Italy, home to both the art and architecture editions of the Venice Biennale, is known for its unique geography as an island city of canals. Its naval and mercantile prominence now diminished, the city has found a new purpose as a center of learning, exhibiting, and tourism. However, its urban morphology and, indeed, most of its buildings are historic and have remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years. Their appearance exhibits a specific Venetian vernacular that has stood the test of time and stands as a backdrop for the city's contemporary activities. How do the facades of these buildings, particularly their windows, reflect this history? And how do the few modern buildings in the city, such as the Palazzo Nervi-Scattolin, respond to this weight of history?
One of Venice's most well-known views is that from the Accademia Bridge looking eastwards towards the Basilica Santa Maria della Salute and the expanse of blue lagoon water as the Grand Canal meets the Giudecca Canal beyond. Framing the view is a multitude of palazzos, former homes of the city's historic wealthy families. Just to the left, the Palazzo Franchetti is today home to the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti as well as being an exhibition venue and home to some national pavilions during the Biennale. It was constructed in 1565 by the Marcello family, before having modifications made to it in the nineteenth century. Its interior was upgraded, and its facade was enriched with Venetian Neo-Gothic elements.
The palazzo's facade facing the Grand Canal is typical of others nearby. Composed of three primary stories, the ground and its mezzanine are clearly subordinate to the upper two floors, apart from a large gate with an inflected arch for boat arrivals. The primacy of the upper stories is evident by the size of the windows and the level of ornament. For a working, mercantile city, perhaps the ground floor was traditionally reserved for trade. Another factor is the city's low altitude and the prevalence of the acqua alta - periodic flooding caused by the tide and storms that raise the water level of the lagoon.
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The presence of such large windows is unusual in Italian cities in medieval and Renaissance times. Venice's protected position on an island in a lagoon gave its inhabitants enough security to incorporate wider openings. The pioneering glass industry on the nearby island of Murano provided a reliable and affordable source for making windows. The glass-blowing technique produces circular discs of glass, known locally as rui, and can still be seen on the window panes of the Palazzo Franchetti.
Thus, there is a basic framework for the Venetian facade for the majority of the island city's buildings. Most construction in the twentieth century took the shape of restorations or internal additions, such as the work of Carlo Scarpa in the Fondazione Querini Stampalia or Tadao Ando's Punta della Dogana. In the heart of ancient Venice, there is one significant exception that stands on Campo Manin, and is difficult to miss. The headquarters of the Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia bank was built between 1963 and 1972 and subsequently renamed the Palazzo Nervi-Scattolin. The bank had originally planned to relocate to a nearby palazzo, and architect Angelo Scattolin was already appointed. A last-minute order to protect the building by the municipality made the plans to reuse the building unfeasible. Instead, the building on the current site was deemed unusable and of low historical value, and thus became the location for a new headquarters.
Scattolin, a locally based architect, was already known for designing significant other projects, including the Teatro Verde on San Giorgio Maggiore and the thoroughly modern Rio Novo building in the Dorsoduro area of Venice. He was kept on to lead the design of the headquarters with Pier Luigi Nervi, an engineer of international fame. The modern design that evolved sparked much debate in the city and is regarded as one of the few triumphs of contemporary design, especially considering its location in the district of San Marco. Venetian projects by Louis Kahn, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright remain on paper.
Unlike the Rio Novo building, with its rigidly gridded facade and mostly glazed ground floor, the Palazzo Nervi-Scattolin exhibits a sensitivity to its context not typically associated with 1960s Modernism. Clad in Istrian stone panels with cast metal fixings, the building sits four stories tall with its facade split into a subordinate lower portion and a major upper portion. Stone panels form a continuous blank wall at ground level, apart from the entrance on Campo Menin. Above that is an expressed mezzanine level recessed behind a loggia of metal mullions.
The upper two stories, like those of the Palazzo Franchetti, are dominant and are faced with a regular grid of stone piers and tall, glazed windows. Although expressed as a grid, the proportions of each window are reminiscent of the historic ones seen on adjacent buildings. The rhythm extends across the entire main facade, but is broken by a portion of the facade where the bays are recessed to form a balcony beyond the piers. This break is yet another subtle nod to historical window arrangements.
This reference to the past, however, did not prevent the use of advanced technology. The bank building needed a large, unbroken hall at ground level, and the solution was a two-meter-high isostatic slab. This was placed at the second floor level and can be seen as an expressed band clad in Istrian stone on the facade. The mezzanine offices around the hall were hung from this slab, and the external mullions seen on the facade are in fact burnished steel tie rods.
The windows of Venice carry immense meaning and are a record of a long history. Their position and patterning express building, craft, and space layout traditions that span centuries. The Palazzo Nervi-Scattolin, a Modernist structure utilizing advanced techniques of the time, did not ignore its context. Nor did it mimic the past with a cheap copy. The balanced and refined facade composition is perhaps an early example of critical regionalism, normally associated with much later architecture.
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