Dialogue between old and new

Tadao Ando restorated Punta della Dogana in Venice for the collection of Francois Pinaut

The Dogana da Mar is dated to the 15th century when the building was used as customs and a key place for the trades in Venice considering its strategic position. For more than four centuries, the function of the Dogana never changed, while its aspect was continuously modified. The building suffered a lot of modifications careless of the original constructive character, provoking its decay. The Italian customs abandoned it. After years of bureaucratic slowness a competition of projects to transform the building in a contemporary art museum was announced by Venice City Council. The winner was the Francois Pinaut Foundation and in June 2007 Francois Pinault signed the convention for the concession of the building for 33 years. After the public presentation of the project by the architect Tadao Ando, the restoration works started in the autumn 2007.
The project presented by Tadao Ando aimed at respecting and emphasizing the triangular shape of the building and the structure of its plan, defined by a series of long brick walls, erected in a north-south orientation transversally between the Giudecca Canal and the Grand Canal. The challenge was to find the best possible compromise between the formal perfection of Ando’s architecture and the chaotic fascination of the old building. All the decisions were predicated upon simplicity and removal of the unnecessary. This intervention was not just a functional adaptation of the building for an exhibition space. In fact, it was a conservative restoration, characterized by a deep study of the architectonic integrity of the XV century’s project, reversibility of the interventions, maximum compatibility of the materials used as well as use of traditional technologies and techniques.
The realization of such an important project with a total cost of 20 million euro, completed in less than 15 months, should be attributed also to a precise and clever management of the operations’ logistic. The division of the yard in different areas for example allowed the coordination of 31 micro yards working simultaneously. In March 2009, the building of Punta della Dogana was consigned to Palazzo Grassi for the setting of the exhibition that opened the 6th of June 2009.

More about the project on p. 56 – 69 in the new issue of Abitare Bulgaria