The Visiting School in Venice (developed in association with Fondazione Giorgio Cini and La Biennale di Venezia) is part of Beyond Entropy’s continuing investigation into the relationship between energy and form (www.beyondentropy.com).

Territorial development in the Venice region is in a period of stasis. Economic, political and social forces have reached a level of saturation and immobility. Urban, natural and agricultural areas are no longer distinct, but have been compromised through a series of annexations and crossovers that have created an endless entropic landscape – northern Italy’s sprawl.

We will study the historical development of the relationship between Venice and the ‘terra ferma’, from Palladio to Studio Secchi Viganó, immersing ourselves in this region and proposing new ways to document and understand the urban sprawl. In contrast to the notion of ‘sightseeing’, the idea of ‘visiting’ offers direct spatial experience of the diffused city. Each participant in the Visiting School will become a detective, a forensic observer wandering, observing, documenting and collecting evidence of the dissipation of traditional forms of urban density and occupation. 

After a visit to the Biennale, participants will be challenged with specific architectural tasks: How to map the daily transformation of the suburbs of Venice? How to represent the boundary of the city in the horizon of such endless urbanity? How to identify spaces for production and spaces for consumption? We will work individually and use video, performance, drawings and models as tools to survey and document the entropic landscape around Venice. We will produce an architectural survey in the form of prototypes that will be exhibited in a pop-up exhibition at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in September