Heritage Apartment Renovation in Venice by Marcante-Testa (UdA).

Venice. What’s not to fall in love with? From it’s extraordinary architecture to the water that wraps itself around the buildings, hugging the bricks and mortar as it meanders its way along the canals. And those bridges… The piazzas… The people, the wine, the food….! Sigh. It is truly a city that mesmerises and enthralls.

This latest project by Andrea Marcante and Adelaide Testa is set in this exceptional city, a city of the past, coming to grips with the inevitable collision of contemporary developments. The apartment is a renovation of a 19th-century building facing a small canal in Sestiere San Marco.

Prior to the project, the building was completely without decorative architectural features appropriate to its character. So the job was layered. It required a reinterpretation of the “inside/outside” relationship, starting with the vertical circulation, where the graphic design of the new paneling surrounding the staircase alludes to the image of the exterior facades, while the “inhabited” landing foreshadows the intimacy of the apartments.

The project involved both the communal areas, the entrance hall and the vertical access as well as the residential interiors, of which this is the first completed apartment. It’s kind of art deco meets 70’s inspired kitsch. Not an easy combination to pull off, nor one to think of in the first place.

The apartment develops through diaphragm-dividers with structures in painted metal and brass, infill elements in green glass and wooden panels treated with Venetian stucco. The dividers conserve natural lighting even in the areas without windows.

See more projects from Marcante-Testa (UdA) on Yellowtrace.

An initial partition creates a relationship between the entrance with the living room and its openings to the outside, with the construction of a new corridor crossing the studio. However they have kept the original design of the parquet flooring with inlaid squares. It’s a beautiful marriage of retaining the past whilst infusing it with a contemporary edge.

“(The) work of interior architecture in this city, more than elsewhere, cannot help but address the relationship with its history (even the most recent history) and the context,” said the architects.

Inside the rooms, the relationship between the windows and the Venetian landscape is reinforced by a system of brass frames with gilded curtains of metal screens.

Every element has been thought through, from the structure of the lamps in Murano glass in the living area, whose hues evoke the reflection of the city in its canals at twilight. The finishes and fittings are all an interpretation of the Venetian landscape, the lagoon and all of its colours, from the glass of the lamps to the colour of the wallpapers and walls, all the way through to the choice of the iridescent carpet.

But the architects have not merely stopped at the construction of the interiors, rather they have taken each detail and assessed it, down to the selection of fabrics on the bed. All of the furnishing have been designed to compliment the city in which the building sits. Take the bedspreads made with Rubelli fabrics, suggesting the Venetian tradition of terrazzo floors. For a city that has so much layering, it is befitting that a contemporary expression of a space has equally as much philosophy within its implementation.

See more projects from Marcante-Testa (UdA) on Yellowtrace.