Architecture & Design S.
10 total works
The acclaimed renovation of two of Venice's most revered landmarks by the master architect for Francois Pinault's unmatched contemporary art collection. Long acknowledged as a master builder of art spaces, Tadao Ando faced a new constructional challenge with the renovation of two of Venice's iconic buildings--and succeeded brilliantly. Approached by French magnate Francois Pinault to renovate two disparate but equally high-profile and challenging Venetian structures to house his peerless collection of contemporary art--the Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana--Ando deftly employed his signature process to produce two elegant interiors from highly complicated historic sites. At the Palazzo Grassi, prominently located on the Grand Canal, Ando's quiet but expert renovation of the eighteenth-century rooms harmonizes contemporary art with historical Venetian spaces. At the Punta della Dogana, the Venetian Republic's original customs warehouse, the large-scale space was subtly subdivided into refined rooms for installation art. The overall effect of the two different renovations is a harmony of old and new, of history and innovation--a result that can only be from the hands of Tadao Ando.
Born in Switzerland in 1943, Mario Botta is a leading member of the Swiss-Italian Ticino school of Architecture. Equally comfortable working on a large scale or with smaller, more intimate projects, he is a maestro when it comes to fusing the strengths of Modernism with the tried and tested forms of tradition. Free and wide-ranging in his use of modern construction techniques, he made his mark with such high-stakes commissions as Evry Cathedral, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Tinguely Museum in Basel. But he is respected particularly for his sensitivity to regional vernacular and to the building's relationship with the land (see his Casa Biachi in Riva San Vitale). Whether designing an office block in Lugano, a home for the elderly in Ticino, or even a celebratory tent for the 700th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation, Botta negotiates sensitively between space and light, the line and the curve, internal symmetry and the benefits of vistas to realise his essentially spiritual vision of an architectural practice for the millennium and beyond.
In the 1990s architecture has evolved considerably despite economic constraints. The new architecture has been guided by the rapid progress of computer assisted design and a newly rediscovered affinity for the arts. Indeed, many architects - from France's Dominique Perrault, creator of the new Bibliotheque Nationale de France, to Japan's Tadao Ando - explain their work in terms of references to minimalism or land art. At the same time art itself has veered towards installations and works which approach architecture. These influences have enriched and diversified contemporary architecture in the developed world.