Venice submerged? SINK OR SWIM

Lao Tzu wrote in The Uses of Not, “Thirty spokes meet in the hub. Where the wheel isn’t is where it’s useful. Hollowed out, clay makes a pot. Where the pot’s not is where it’s useful. Cut doors and windows to make a room. Where the room isn’t, there’s room for you. So the profit in what is is in the use of what isn’t.” Gaps between worldly items, silences between activities, negative emptiness between positive spaces.

Like the poem, the project intends to inverse spatial relationships, and consequently inverse Venice and its spatial relationships, highlighting the fact that this City of Canals is dependent on its waterways in more ways than one. The future of Venice is one where the reality of flooding is all too real- the Venice we know now will be inundated by water. Canals overflow, riverbanks disappear, and squares submerge.

However, rather than attempting to resist the flood, why not let nature take its course and let Venice be submerged and create a new landscape and geography? Let Venice be flooded by water and let Venice rise again from its famed canals, literally.

Flooding will cause the figure-ground of Venice to offset itself inwards, as spaces and places get eaten up by the surges of water. Water takes over and negative spaces between buildings swell. The canals ultimately reign. And it is in this developing new water world that we build new infrastructural scaffoldings to occupy above these spaces to inverse architecture- the new will be built in the spaces left by the old as the old gets reclaimed by the rising waters.

Above the water, these new structures create a new terrain for pedestrian movement, walking even closer to the canals. Below the water surface, underwater tourism thrives. The historical fabric is ‘preserved’ in the underwater realm. Architectural columns become new scaffoldings for underwater flora and fauna to conquer and repopulate. Nature will soon take its course, to frame and preserve the foundations of the famed ‘Venetian experience’. The old is preserved underwater, petrified in time; the new continues above water, to change with the times and needs of the people; the Venetian (tourist) experience continues to evolve and intensify with these changes.

Feel free to approach diving shops that will open and swim through the ‘ruins’ of old Venice. No more going to the Lido, the beach is right at your backyard. With courtyards of the Palazzos flooded, bath houses connected to the canals are created; you can literally swim to the neighbouring house! Hotels have their own personal waterfront and ‘water-back’ as the architecture is framed by water.

Venice is once again, the almighty port of the (new flooded) world!