PALAZZINA MASIERI RESTORATION PROJECT
Project Theme: Culture | Restoration
Project Year: 2023-2024
Location: Dorsoduro 3900, Venice
Building Owner: Fondazione Angelo Masieri
Client: Heritage Asset Management | Galerie Negropontes
Building Dimension: 450 Sqm
Design: Barman architects
Project Team: Roberta Bartolone, Giulio Mangano
Contractors: Giuseppe Tonini, Elisabetta Longega, Enrico Trolese, G.R.C. Gruppo Restauro Conservativo, Paolo Giabardo, Vianello srl, CIEM
Lighting: Linea Light Group, Stilnovo
Furnishings: Fantin, Lamm, Vipp
Status: Design and Restoration Completed
Photographer: Fabio Purgino
OUR TASK
In 2023, the Angelo Masieri Foundation established a partnership with Heritage Asset Management and Galerie Negropontes to reactivate the building and the Foundation's cultural program.
Architectural renovations concern restoring part of the internal plasterwork and floors, maintaining the wooden windows, and improving the lighting and technological systems.
Barman architects has directed the restoration project and the site management. After building works is completed, the Palazzina Masieri will host temporary exhibitions and cultural events.
THE CONTEXT
The Masieri Foundation was established in memory of Angelo Masieri, a collaborator of Carlo Scarpa, who tragically died in 1952. The memorial was built on a typical Venetian triangular plot at the corner of the Grand Canal and Rio Novo: in the area was situated a vernacular three-floor palace that should have been replaced by a new building commissioned to Frank Lloyd Wright. He designed a residence and study center for architecture students, but the project was rejected to protect the city's historical appearance from the change.
In 1968, Scarpa imagined realizing the Masieri Memorial by removing the interior walls and floors of the original palace, leaving the historical outer walls as a shell within which entirely modern spaces were constructed. The current building represents continuity and change: the ancient façade, visible from the canal, and the new insertion, a masterpiece of light and details.
The research before the project
The general philosophy is supported by the accurate analysis of the historical and archival documents kept at the Centro Studi Carlo Scarpa in Treviso, the National Museum of XXI Century Arts (MAXXI) in Rome, the Archivio Progetti Iuav in Venice and the archives of the Municipality and the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the city of Venice and Lagoon.
The research, started in January 2016, was focused on the chronological reconstruction of the four different versions of the design drawn up by Scarpa. The partial outcomes of the data collection activity have been gathered in the exhibition “Carlo Scarpa after Carlo Scarpa” held at Iuav University of Venice in the same year.
The research carried out led to the understanding the various phases, starting from the unrealized projects to the works, that affected the building up to its current state.
