Reconstructions. Unfinished images on the Grand Canal in 1985

When the 3rd International Architecture Exhibition in Venice was established within the Architecture Biennale in 1985, design issues were introduced to be developed on punctual interventions scattered throughout the lagoon city. Among the competition themes, those of the Accademia Bridge and Ca’ Venier dei Leoni constituted pivotal points of rethinking the urban texture and visuality of Venice. On the one hand, the temporary condition of a bridge that was designed to be replaced with a permanent one; on the other, the incompleteness of a facade compared with the double dimension of water. The article deepens some of the proposals collected in archive documents known as the “Progetto Venezia”, showing the architectural possibilities explored for the Accademia Bridge and Ca’ Venier dei Leoni, firing the debate on methods, operations, and techniques capable of laying the groundwork for a new motif of communication between the present and the past of architecture. Reconstructing memory through images implies operating a critical reading on the relationship between temporality and spatiality that, in archive drawing, translates into quick sketches, annotations and schematic studies, latent with design intentions. Therefore, the reconstructed images trace the definition of the new architectural organism, evoking compositional values and urban issues that provide a further program of visualities along the Grand Canal suggesting future intentions on the processes of rethinking the architecture of the past.