NEW CINEMA SQUARE IN VENICE LIDO
An urban scale backbone, a space for everyone
C+S Architects
The entire site of the project is listed by Italy’s heritage authority, the Soprintendenza ai Beni Ambientali e Architettonici, and consists of two historical buildings and a park in the gap that was to have been occupied by a third building, never constructed, in whose place a beautiful garden has flowered. The challenge was to work with zero volume: for a site where it appeared there was nothing to be done, it was instead necessary to design the elements of a measured space, capable of entering into a dialogue with and reconnect two impressive historical buildings. The project transforms the “red carpet” of the Cinema into a “white carpet for all people”: a monochrome white stone carpet that links together two existing buildings and recovers the natural dimension of the park. Stone restores the scale of the original project and the missing third building. The green space of the park carves a curvilinear form into the white carpet. The historical garden, whose century-old trees were conserved, insinuates and grafts itself onto the new pattern of the stone paving to trace the invisible presence of the third building.
