David Chipperfield Architects Unveils Restoration of Venice’s Procuratie Vecchie
Instantly recognizable from the exterior, the 16th-century building on St. Mark’s Square will be partially accessible to the public for the first time in 500 years
The most beautiful urban cores have always taken a long time to form, according to historian Sigfried Giedion. In Venice, it took 500 years of continuous transformations both of open spaces and the surrounding buildings for St. Mark’s Square to become a site of celebration of the human scale we recognize today. Le Corbusier cited its “visual acoustics” in attempting to grasp the essence of this public space. With such perspective, the restoration project of the Procuratie Vecchie (Old Procuracies) by David Chipperfield Architects Milan (DCA Milan) aims to enter the timeless symphony of evolution and renewal that is the city of Venice, contributing a new layer of contemporary depth to the composite legacy of St. Mark’s Square, its heart.