Casa di Gardella alle Zattere Site Features

Windows that refuse the grid

The openings are placed irregularly across the facade, never lining up into the rows a 1960s block would normally have. Gardella was copying the accreted rhythm of buildings that grew over centuries -- the effect is that the eye reads the front as old before the mind works out that it isn't.

Biancone marble on a modern block

The base, window surrounds and balcony fronts are biancone from Vicenza, set against coloured brick-grit plaster. These are the materials and colours of the houses either side, used at their scale, which is the whole of how the building passes.

The 45-degree service windows

Small windows set at an angle light the utility spaces -- a purely functional move with no historical precedent, and the clearest signal on the facade that this is a modern building rather than a pastiche.

The step down beside the church

The block drops from five storeys to four where it meets Spirito Santo, and is set back to leave a gap. It is a deliberate act of deference to a neighbour, and it is what most new buildings in historic centres fail to do.

The building Wright didn't get to build

In 1953 Venice rejected Frank Lloyd Wright's Masieri Memorial on the Grand Canal as incompatible with the city. Gardella's block, finished in 1962, is the accepted answer to the same question -- the two are taught as a pair.