‘L’arte Dell’Attivismo’
Architecture: MArch
Daniel Parkinson
Year 02
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Project
Venice occupies a delicate balance with the sea. Its location and wealth is predicated on the lagoon and wider Adriatic Sea, while the rising waters provide a real jeopardy and possibly its eventual downfall.
Seas are vulnerable to many factors that may destabilise the ecological system we depend on to survive. The Adriatic leads world league tables in the extraordinarily destructive practice the bottom trawling, 80% of the seafloor is routinely trawled resulting in widespread habitat destruction.
As a radical tactic, a group of sustainable Italian fishermen, have been placing large sculptures into the sea to snag the nets of bottom trawlers. This activism not only hinders bottom trawling, but the sculptures also encourage coral and marine plants to grow, restoring the ecological system.
This proposition in the largely abandoned Fabbriche Nuove in Rialto, proposes to house this activism as an artistic, industrial, and educational place for the construction, display and ‘launching’ of large figurative sculptures that are sent out to disrupt the unsustainable fishing practices.
The Fabbriche building, designed by the sculptor Sansovino accepts its calling to be hollowed out to form an even larger corridor. An enfilade of large spaces accepts the materials loaded from barges on the Grand Canal into a high, well-lit, sculpture workshop to create the sculptures that eventually exit through a ceremonial massive door to be publicly craned onto barges that set out for the Adriatic. The museum is the presentation of this large-scale semi-industrial artistic endeavour.
