Presented within the Procuratie Vecchie in St. Mark's Square in Venice,  Monumento renews the language of the monumental column and the values to which society aspires in order to reflect its own epoch. The column is set within the space that contains the monumental staircase of the Procuratie Vecchie. Its proportions are in dialogue with those of the space around it and the visitor is invited to a closer view which subverts the traditional rhetoric of monuments: by climbing the stairs the spectator is able to see the column in its entirety, from its base to the summit, with a change of perspective which, in turn, triggers a conceptual shift.

“Monumental architecture is a composition which neglects function in order to ritualize a thought by means of a three-dimensional work. The history of peoples is that of a hereditary flow of rhetorical figures which continuously recur in cycles; they redefine their own meanings and establish symbolisms which we have not only learnt to read but which, generation after generation, we have absorbed as a sort of latent language of the collective unconscious. When, therefore, a monument is stripped of its own symbolism, what remains is a virtuoso and melancholic lyric song, discrete and solemn, and yet in search of contact because it was born to be expressed, first as artifact and gesture and then as a concept and presence. With Monumento, I have used the rhetorical language of monumental columns as a reflection on our times and on the rhetoric underlying the values to which our society aspires; a society which confirms the need to redefine the concept of strength, to reconsider the role of frailty and which puts listening and dialogue at the centre of intercultural relations”. – Tresoldi

A society which recognizes its own fragility is naturally inclined to also recognize its most sensitive aspects; to welcome diversity and to assimilate those historical, existential and metaphorical features which exemplify it; and to reorganize it in accordance with shared aspirations. In this process of a changing sense of fragility, its role becomes vital, a driving force in marking out a vision that is at last plural and inclusive. Condensing past and present into a contemporary narrative, Tresoldi converts the rhetoric of monuments into an anti-rhetoric: Monumento thus proposes an imperfect completeness which dematerializes the colossal into something ethereal, accompanies the solemn cycle of the everyday and builds harmony through diversity, expressing in the coexistence of different elements, a re-appropriation of a world in change and the development of a future that is more aware.

After an extensive 5-year restoration by David Chipperfield Architects Milan, promoted by Generali, the iconic building of the ProcuratieVecchie in St. Mark’s Square now opens to the city. A prestigious place that, for the first time in 500 years, reveals its spaces called to a new social purpose, witnessed by the opening of the new home of The Human Safety Net foundation.

Team:
Architect: Edoardo Tresoldi
Collaborator: Monumentois conceived in collaboration with Carlotta Franco for development of the architectural concept and with support for the project from GICO Studio.
Photo credits: Roberto Conte