Eleanor Suess
Studio 2.2 2012/13 Water | Crossings
For 2012-13 Studio 2.2 continued its focus on the relationship between cities and water, looking at the architecture of water-borne transportation, and considering the role of water in supporting the back-of-house activities of particular UNESCO World Heritage sites.
The Semester 1 project made a connection between the World Heritage site of Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs, separated by the official UNESCO ‘buffer zone’ – a threshold as wide as the river itself. The studio proposed re-opening the Isle of Dogs to Greenwich ferry, to encourage that perilous journey from north to south London and vice versa; to remake for our own times the Ferry House that stood for centuries overlooking Greenwich from the north bank.
In Semester 2 Studio 2.2 worked on another watery World Heritage site: Venice. It has become commonplace to condemn Venice as some kind of enormous open air museum, a condition that its status as a World Heritage Site merely, and tragically, confirms. A squero is where new Gondolas and other kinds of watercraft (some of them as uniquely Venetian as the Gondola) are made. In the second semester students designed new, expanded squeri on two sites in Venice, incorporating a traditional industry, as well as housing for a squerarolo and their family. The studio considered how to build in a city where nothing new is allowed, and how to relate to the practices associated with this traditional industry and the buildings which house what UNESCO describes as “intangible cultural heritage”.
