Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ize-winning architect Renzo Piano reinvented the Magazzini del Sale as a showcase for
modern art with Fondazione Vedova. The transformation is only fitting: Venice's salt
monopoly was once its dearest treasure, but now its ideas are its greatest asset.
Giudecca's Creative Comeback
MIT-trained Italian architect Cino Zucci kicked off the creative revival of Giudecca in
1995 with his conversion of 19th-century brick factories and waterfront warehouses into
art spaces and studio lofts. A triangular bunker-warehouse for bombs during WWII has
been reincarnated as Teatro Junghans, inaugurated in 2005 as Venice's hot spot for experi-
mental theatre. Giudecca's transformation calls for a toast at the Skyline Rooftop Bar,
atop the swanky hotel that was once Ernest Wullekopf's 1896 Molino Stucky flour mill.
TOP FIVE MODERN-ARCHITECTURE LANDMARKS
Biennale pavilions
High-modernist pavilion architecture often steals the show at art siennales.
Punta della Dogana
Customs houses are creatively repurposed as a contemporary-art showcase by Tadao Ando.
Negozio Olivetti
Forward-thinking Carlo Scarpa transformed a dusty souvenir shop into a showcase for high
technology c 1958.
Fondazione Giorgio Cini
Former naval academy rocks the boat as an avant-garde art gallery.
Palazzo Grassi
Tadao Ando's minimalism rescues Massari's palace from neoclassical ornament overload.
Watch This Space
New architecture projects are cropping up in unlikely places around Venice's lagoon. On
the cemetery island of San Michele, David Chipperfield Architects are building exten-
sions to echo the firm's sombre, minimalist Courtyard of the Four Evangelists. The evolu-
tion of Venice's historic Arsenale shipyards continues, with medieval assembly-line sheds
serving as pre-industrial-chic galleries during the Biennale. Ca' Pisani's glam-rock-deco
interiors kicked off a historic-design-hotel trend, including Domina Home Ca' Zusto's
mod-harem redesign of a medieval palace, Gritti Palace's historically hip 2013 relaunch,
and Alvin Grassi's deco-luxe redesign for the Grand Canal's Palazzo Barbarigo.
Fondazione Giorgio Cini is continuing to reinvent Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore as a
global cultural centre, with a new maze dedicated to Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges
behind the Palladian cloisters, and a former dormitory transformed into a humanities lib-
