A sort of Venice trip report. September 2016.

Getting to Venice.
Pretty straightforward really. Emirates to Dubai with a brief stop at Singapore. I got lucky on the Melbourne to Singapore leg, a row of four seats all to myself. About four hours hanging around Dubai, then on to Venice.

Dubai does not exactly grab me. It feels like a monster shopping mall with attached parking for aeroplanes. You can buy just about anything there, a nice Rolex or maybe an Aston Martin rag top. But you’ll struggle if you are thirsty – and thank the good Lord for McGettigans Irish bar.

Populated by tough looking dudes, shaved heads and bodily ink. They look like they’ve just come from Darkest Africa, maybe just completed sinking a shaft for a glue mine or creating a cement plantation. Snatches of conversation reveal that they are headed home from Thailand holidays, probably bound for Slough where they will install microwave ovens or deliver custom kitchens.

Fly on to Venice, a spare seat beside me. Immigration is like a zoo, grumpy Wildebeests or Wildepeople. Baggage takes an eternity, then jump the No 5 bus to P. Roma. Walk to the apartment near the Frari, meet my BnB host. A quick briefing, internet password, vetro on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday, carta Monday, Wednesday and Fridays and I’m good to go.

A welcome evening meal with Caroline and Phil, members of the Venetian Anglophone diaspora. Phil’s a bit chuffed. His first novel, to be published in March has been accepted for publication in Italian.

I was not a very good dinner guest; eight hours of jet lag almost had me falling asleep in Phil’s very good pasta.

Well, I came to Venice for architecture, and this year celebrates 110 years since Carlo Scarpa, Venice’s best known modern architect, was born. There’s a display of his docs at the School of Architecture, looking at several of his buildings, plus a display of photos of the Brion family tomb at San Vito di Altivole. I plan on visiting that next week.

The School of Architecture is housed in a former convent, closed in 1820 (thanks, Napoleon), and repurposed in the 1960’s for the Faculty of architecture. Scarpa did an entrance to the school, and it’s pretty special.

The Italians know a thing or two about concrete; Italy is just about made of limestone, handy if you want to make cement. But even then, concrete has historically been expensive, and labour cheap. So in Italy, you will see some of the most elegant concrete structures, bridges on the autostrada, where huge labour was expended on formwork to minimise the amount of concrete and reo going into a structure. Scarpa is good with concrete.

When the convent was renovated, the original Istrian door surround was salvaged. The logical thing would be to re-use it. Scarpa laid it flat in the entrance courtyard, in a pond of sorts. That doorway would once have signified the separation of the nuns from the world, a statement of isolation. Laid flat, it seems to say “there are no barriers to learning, the world is welcome here, and the students have to go into the world”.

And yet a reference is retained, as the entry to the courtyard from Campo dei Tolentini is closed with a sliding door made of stone and glass, something of a statement. Yes, we are closed for business right now, but we are not isolated. A concrete portico stands over the door, inviting entry and saying something about the shelter that academe can provide. It’s tapered, no easy task for a cast in-situ concrete element. But Scarpa, and his tradesmen, knew a thing or two about concrete.

Now I am learning more about one of my favourite cities. Thanks....

Great read, Peter. You've done an excellent job of providing delicious details beyond the usual, "We did this, and then we did this..." report. I'm looking forward to more from you!

I'm posting stuff on facebook, where i can include photos. If anyone is interested, send me a private message and I'll be happy to friend you.

I'm writing all sorts of stuff, but without the photos the text can be a bit meanlingless. I'm finding the Archi Biennale really interesting, most engaging on an intellectual level. Spent the day at the Giardini, the Ardsenale tomorrow, and then I will spend another day at each. I find that I'm good for about four hours, and then the brain overloads.

"...install microwave ovens or deliver custom kitchens." 😄

This is great! We have been to the Art Bienniale twice, in '13 and '15. Next time we will try the Architecture one---2018? I am sure our aspiring architect daughter (applying to graduate school as I write) would be happy to join us.

I am always looking for an excuse to visit Venice again.

The German pavilion was something of an intellectual experience. Built in 1938, designed by Ernest Haiger, so it is a fine example of Nazi triumphalist architecture, the Third Reich in cement and stone. Leni Riefenstahl would have been shovelling 32mm film into a camera and using it as a film set.

The German exhibition is all about how refugees are to be incorporated into mainstream society. “If we build it, they will come” turned on its head. “If they come, we will build it”, notwithstanding Angela Merkel’s recent electoral problems. It portrays residential developments in the main refugee receiving cities, Munich, Stuttgart and others, where a community can be created that does not become a ghetto (a problem for Germans, that ghetto thing), and ultimately become a vibrant community.

The German exhibition is titled “Making Heimat”, “heimat” probably a term that makes sense to speakers of German. “Welcome’, “at home”, “here is a place for you” may cover it.

Heimat has been rendered physically. Four openings have been made in the German pavilion, no doors or closures, a statement of openness incorporated into a heritage structure. They will be bricked up in November when the Biennale concludes, and in the meantime make a strong social and political statement. It makes me a bit humble when I think how we Australians treat our miserable refugees.

I took a trip to Padua yesterday, strolled around the Piazza’s del Frutta and Erbe, on a not successful shopping expedition, then on to the Botanical Gardens, the Orto Botanico. Padua has been a seat of medical learning for just about ever, and the garden was established in 1545 for the study of medicinal plants. So there are gardens with poisonous plants, with labels indicating the hazard level for the unwary visitor. There is a section for plants introduced into Italy via Padua – the potato, sesame, lilac and sunflower and many others. Another section has rare and endangered species, so in all it is very educational.

Education moves on and learnings have to be displayed in a new setting; hence the Garden of Biodiversity, opened a couple of years ago. A huge greenhouse, climate controlled, spectacular architecture, with intelligent building automation that can be a surprise. You can be standing beside a louvred window, that all of a sudden opens.

Five climatic zones are incorporated – tropical, sub-humid tropical, temperate, Mediterranean and arid, and you can feel the difference as you walk through. There is lots of information, how plants have affected human development, and how humans have affected plant development by selective breeding and land management. It is very approachable for young people, and there is an app you download that gives extra info as you walk about.

If your kids are sick of churches and museums, this might grab them.

I'd post photos here if I could. If you found me on Facebook you'd see them. There I am Peter Stockfeld. There are only two Peter Stockfelds in the world, so it would not be too hard to friend the right one.

A visit to Forte Marghera
Forte Marghera has been on the “to do” list for ages, and now it is Mission Accomplished. Took the tram which was much maligned when first introduced, breaking down on the Ponte della Liberta, causing traffic jams back to, well, Trieste. But it worked well today.

If you think of going, cross the tram track, head back towards the roundabout, head right at the roundabout for about 300 metres along the side of the road, and you’ll see a sign to the Fort. Your usual seven day or whatever vap pass works on the tram, I believe.

I got a bit lucky – I thought that the exhibition I wanted to see, how waterfronts are being developed – opened at 10:00. Wrong, it opened at 12:00, so I had a couple of hours to kill. I’ll write about that separately.

The first shipping container appeared on the waterfront in 1956, and has had as big an impact on shipping as, say, email on the postal system i.e. Completely turned it on it’s head. All those down-town wharves with small ships, with ships cranes, unloading cargo have gone, rendered useless. Container ships need massive craneage, and equally massive container parks. They don’t fit in down town.

So many cities are struggling to figure out what to do with those dock areas behind the high brick walls topped with broken glass. There’s great scope for urban renewal, and the exhibition at Marghera showcased some of them. The theme for this year’s Archi Biennale is “Reporting from the Front”, and the work at Marghera was titled “Reporting from Marghera and other Waterfronts.

It showed how London got it right on the Isle of Dogs, Genoa, where the waterfront is now connected to the city, Sydney at Darling Harbour. Melbourne was not showcased for good reason. The development in Melbourne has lead to no more than a bunch of high rise apartment towers, a windswept precinct even on a calm Summer day, no street life and no community. Totally rotten.

So what about Marghera? Visitors to Venice just look over the lagoon to Marghera, and wish it was not there. However, it is a major port, industrial facility and centre for technology, none of which we visitors want to know about. The Venice port Authority covers Marghera and the Venice cruise liner docks (and we all complain about the cruise liners), and the liner docks are a hand basin compared to Marghera.

On the train or bus on the Ponte della Liberta, we see the Marghera cranes in the sky like fighting machines from “War of the Worlds”. I’ve never seen a load on the hook, but if you want to bring a 300 tonne lift into northern Italy, Marghera is where you will do it.

So there is a bit of a problem for Venice/Marghera/Port Authority, and the solutions are not clear. But at least the display at Forte Marghera flagged some of the issues, and gave me cause to think.

So, Forte Marghera.

The Lagoon has a few forts.

Mazzorbetto, designed to hold guns that were obsolete even when the fort was built. If you wanted to lay gunfire on Torcello or Marco Polo airport, then you’d fortify Mazzorbetto. Perhaps that explains why the Mazzorbetto guns never fired a shot in anger.

Forte Malomocco, is at such a low elevation that gun shots would have smacked into the sea wall, the Murazzi, rather than hindering anyone.

Forte Maximillian, a big drum shaped brick edifice on San’ Erasmo, has not fired a shot in anger. During the 1939/45 hostilities, it housed a German anti aircraft battery. One feels for the Germans – they must have been bored to death.

La Certosa, pretty well fortified because it had a gun powder factory and munitions store. It’s been cleaned up a lot now, but there are still signs saying that there might be unexploded ordnance. Lou and I were lucky to visit before the big clean up, and saw the remnants of officer housing. Spiral stairs, balconies, cellars, parade ground remnants.

1797, and which ever fort fired the shot caused a whole lot of trouble. Killing a Frenchman on a French ship, putting cannon balls into said ship was not well received. Poor Doge Manin (who is said to have burst into tears on hearing he was appointed Doge) handed in his Ducal hat and moved to his cottage in the country. I had once felt sorry for Manin, but I have seen his cottage. About 100 rooms, fifteen acres of formal garden, so I am not sorry any more.

The French strolled into the Piazza, pipe clayed and powder stained, probably confronted by a bunch of folk in Carnivale masks and costumes, seized all the tables at Florians and Quadri and put it on the tab, we’ll fix it next week. Declined the offer of selfie sticks and those slime balls that gentlemen from the sub continent sell, we don’t need no slime balls thanks, we’ve already got officers.

Which brings me to Forte Marghera. Built by Napoleon, started in about 1805, and was besieged for a year by the Austrians in 1848, during the Daniel Manin unpleasantness. The layout is so based on fighting last years’s conflict, so there are moats, revetments, all the things that help withstand musket fire and attacks by boats. Unfortunately the Austrians had cannon, and plastered the fort, to little avail. The Austrians ultimately figured that if they took the cannons off their carriages, they could gain enough muzzle elevation to land cannon balls near the Frari. Game, set and match to the Austrians.

And so there is a slightly spooky feeling when one walks around, there’s an expectation that a bugle might sound any minute. You can’t help but know that there’s been a great deal of heroism there, like walking on the Somme or Agincourt for the Brits, Normandy for the Americans, Gallipoli or Kokoda for we Aussies.

But it’s all coming to life. There’s a slide guitar concert there tonight, a huge shed being used by a bunch of artists doing big canvases, a pottery studio, and buildings are being restored to create a historical research centre. There’s a café there “Gatto Rosso”, and a cat sanctuary.
A lot of possibilities.

A visit to Possagno.
Possagno is where Canova was born, and there’s a museum there of his plaster casts, the Gipsoteca.

I’ve always wondered how marble statues were created. Maybe Michelangelo, with David in his mind, just bought a block of marble and hammered off all the bits that are not, well, David. But the Gipsoteca disabused me of that belief.

Canova produced statues on an industrial scale. The output from just one man is beyond belief, but he had a process.

1. Make a small model in clay, to get the proportions right, and maybe to convince the client that we’re on the right track.
2. Make a full scale, or maybe a nearly full scale, model of the statue in clay. This will need some sort of metal armature to stop the whole thing drooping, but it does not need to be solid. Clay is good for this, as it can be kept moist and worked for months.
3. Once the clay model is finished, take a plaster cast from it. Canova would have contracted this work to others, and there would have been specialists. This is a complex process as the mould would have been in many pieces. This is where the gypsum comes in (in Australia, one brand of dry wall is called Gyprock, and Gypsona make plaster bandages for medical plaster casts).
4. Clean up the plaster model, removing the lines where the moulds join, and then sink lead nails into the model at salient points, say the tip of the nose, the extremities. On a life size statue, there might be say 200 nails.
5. Get a block of marble, and have the assistants rough it out using the lead nails as reference points. There is huge skill in this, one wrong hammer blow and the statue will be ex-ear.
6. Canova applies his magic touch to the roughed out statue, polishing, scraping, a bit more off here and there.
7. Client handover, champagne and handshakes all round.

So the Gipsoteca is very informing, and somehow I think that you are closer to Canova’s intent when you see the plaster models. Even though many are freckled with lead nails, you can see Canova’s brilliance.

Practicalities:
I took a train from Venice to Bassano del Grappa, train 5708, leaves Venezia S.L. At 6:56, arrives Bassano 8:07
Bought tickets for the bus at the newspaper kiosk just outside the station.
Bus 202 left at 8:40, arrived at Possagno at 9:17. The museum opens at 9:30. There are three Possagno stops – you want the second stop, after the Possagno cross, which is a big granite cross beside the road.
Returned on bus 202, leaving Possagno at 11:35, so that gives one a couple of hours in the Gipsoteca. You have to hail the bus.
Bassano del Grappa is a pleasant town to stroll around, but very quiet at lunch time as all the shops close. The bridge over the Brenta was designed by Palladio, and it’s lovely. It’s been lost in floods and war more than once, and the Alpini soldiers are in the habit of rebuilding it every time it is lost.

Peter, this is an amazing report and very entertaining to read. I learned a lot about places I actually thought I knew! I loved the Botanical Gardens in Padua and was happy to learn more about them. Thank you for posting; fascinating information.

Thanks Peter for your informative and in-depth reports from my favorite European city.