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Are we the harbingers of the flood that is dissolving Venice? Are we the consumers of capitalist markets, who feast on the semblance of authenticity? Certainly, we have left Venice reeling in our wake.
This project proposes the establishment of a symposium or forum where drowning Venice, inundated by the surging masses and rising seas, becomes the site for debating future challenges and opportunities. Through the lens of the lagoon city, the proposal will respond to key Venetian – and global – concerns of environmental degradation.
After all, it is not only important how and when these important conversations happen: it is also a question of where. It is about situating policymakers in the room – or the city – where it happens. It is about interrogating crisis amid crisis to understand what kind of discourse develops through a relationship with place.
At the lowest point in all of Venice where the city risks some of her greatest assets, one can only hope that we can divine a direction for our future. So, let Venice be the mask that reveals our honest intentions, and divests us of artifice.
Just as the Biennale situates art discourse amid the cultural backdrop of Venice, Symposia Zero proposes to situate environmental discourse in the drowning lagoon city.
In keeping with the passage of time and the evolving identity of Venice, Symposia Zero sheds one mask and puts on another.
To deal with contemporary issues of climate change, the forum must also put on its mask in the form of a lightweight, porous ‘sea veil’ that rejects the material and carbon-intensive construction of traditional sea defence systems.
To prevent flooding altogether would be to build a wall around the lagoon city. Yet, the power of hydraulic action is dependent on velocity not volume of flow, and the key to mitigating erosion lies in slowing down the tide.
To facilitate its metamorphosis, Symposia Zero was designed for disassembly from the outset. Though the thickness of the concrete shell was sized to ensure its structural and thermal performance, its construction was kept primitive.