A LINE MADE BY WALKING
A Line Made by Walking
weber+winterle / Lorenzo Weber + Alberto Winterle
with Marco Santoni, Martino Stelzer, Marta Tonelli
First prize Wave 2024 edition
Comprehensive photographic documentation of the process and surveys conducted on Venetian land.
Il camminare presuppone che a ogni passo il mondo cambi in qualche suo aspetto e pure che qualcosa cambi in noi.
(Italo Calvino, Collezione di sabbia, 2023 [1984])
In 1967, Richard Long created a work by photographing the trace imprinted on a lawn, created by the simple passage of a person on foot. A line, temporary and ephemeral, that represents the degree zero of the transformation of the landscape. A physical action that modifies a place, only for a limited time, without building anything.
In 1984, James Stirling inaugurated the new Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, an innovative public, and at the same time urban, project in which a city pedestrian path crosses the open space of a gallery courtyard. The rigid circular shape of the courtyard around which the building is constructed is contaminated by the passage of people passing through the city, allowing for crossings of functions and gazes. A monumental project on an urban scale where on different layers are placed paths and spaces, closed and open, which interpenetrate and feed off each other.
These are two extreme and opposite approaches, on the one hand a spontaneous action that leaves a momentary sign of its passage, and on the other a constructed, physical path. However, both are projects, artistic and architectural, where it is the path that gives the measure of the physical space. The human dimension becomes the scale of reference of the path, whether it is free in an uncontaminated territory or inserted in a complex context where it can touch places, build relationships, allow new views to be discovered.
Starting from these two possible different attitudes, let us imagine a new urban route that touches and crosses the island of Giudecca. The island contrasts a clear built front, facing the canal of the same name towards the city of Venice, with a partly fringed and undefined front towards the lagoon. If, therefore, the main route consists of the space and the all-walkable edge of the fondamenta, on the opposite front there is no route that follows the course of the island, but only a comb-like system of penetration. The ‘back of Giudecca consisting of an alternation of different ‘urban materials’ offers interesting opportunities for use and interpretation. The succession of built spaces made out of dwellings, warehouses, boatyards, or of open spaces, becomes an opportunity to experiment with different modes of intervention, giving continuity to changing spatial conformations. The route can also extend to the island’s offshoots, joining the island of San Giorgio to the east and Sacca Fisola and Sacca San Biagio to the west. The horizontal route connects places, crosses buildings, extends over the water, while at the same time the possible vertical movement offers unusual views, uncovering or denying the view of the city.
Even the space of the classroom hosting the exercise becomes a place of design, like a new island to be annexed to the Giudecca, where the theme of the path takes on a symbolic but also physical significance, becoming part of the new, unusual paths through the architecture and landscape of Venice.
weber+winterle / Lorenzo Weber + Alberto Winterle
with Marco Santoni, Martino Stelzer, Marta Tonelli
First prize Wave 2024 edition
Comprehensive photographic documentation of the process and surveys conducted on Venetian land.
Il camminare presuppone che a ogni passo il mondo cambi in qualche suo aspetto e pure che qualcosa cambi in noi.
(Italo Calvino, Collezione di sabbia, 2023 [1984])
In 1967, Richard Long created a work by photographing the trace imprinted on a lawn, created by the simple passage of a person on foot. A line, temporary and ephemeral, that represents the degree zero of the transformation of the landscape. A physical action that modifies a place, only for a limited time, without building anything.
In 1984, James Stirling inaugurated the new Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, an innovative public, and at the same time urban, project in which a city pedestrian path crosses the open space of a gallery courtyard. The rigid circular shape of the courtyard around which the building is constructed is contaminated by the passage of people passing through the city, allowing for crossings of functions and gazes. A monumental project on an urban scale where on different layers are placed paths and spaces, closed and open, which interpenetrate and feed off each other.
These are two extreme and opposite approaches, on the one hand a spontaneous action that leaves a momentary sign of its passage, and on the other a constructed, physical path. However, both are projects, artistic and architectural, where it is the path that gives the measure of the physical space. The human dimension becomes the scale of reference of the path, whether it is free in an uncontaminated territory or inserted in a complex context where it can touch places, build relationships, allow new views to be discovered.
Starting from these two possible different attitudes, let us imagine a new urban route that touches and crosses the island of Giudecca. The island contrasts a clear built front, facing the canal of the same name towards the city of Venice, with a partly fringed and undefined front towards the lagoon. If, therefore, the main route consists of the space and the all-walkable edge of the fondamenta, on the opposite front there is no route that follows the course of the island, but only a comb-like system of penetration. The ‘back of Giudecca consisting of an alternation of different ‘urban materials’ offers interesting opportunities for use and interpretation. The succession of built spaces made out of dwellings, warehouses, boatyards, or of open spaces, becomes an opportunity to experiment with different modes of intervention, giving continuity to changing spatial conformations. The route can also extend to the island’s offshoots, joining the island of San Giorgio to the east and Sacca Fisola and Sacca San Biagio to the west. The horizontal route connects places, crosses buildings, extends over the water, while at the same time the possible vertical movement offers unusual views, uncovering or denying the view of the city.
Even the space of the classroom hosting the exercise becomes a place of design, like a new island to be annexed to the Giudecca, where the theme of the path takes on a symbolic but also physical significance, becoming part of the new, unusual paths through the architecture and landscape of Venice.