The language of reconnection. Two approaches in Venice

Over the centuries, Architecture has chosen, as Summerson records in his 1963’s essay, a very precise grammar, a syntax that recognizes itself in the distinction of the four and later five, architectural orders, considered as fundamental for the construction of the project. However, every artist who was inspired by the principles of these orders, enacted something more: they modified the rules in the most subjective and arbitrary way. Maybe, Contemporary Architecture acquired this aptitude, trying to resist all kinds of constrains: it unburdened by any rough rules and dogmas. What is left out is the order with whom the Architect will dispose these referenced paradigms in the syntagm, although he is equipped with a lexicon, a sort of logic thanks to which some permanent codes have existed and still exist today. In this way it is possible to think that the syntax of every architect is something to be invented: he needs to find it in the increased diversity of the world of art and in the every day world. Architecture builds the communicative directions of his own language thanks to the continuous variatio, both diachronic and synchronic, with the other codes that probably do not always belong to the world of construction. For its organization and constitutive value, Architecture has an active role in the capability of making changes and experiments that contribute to the definition of a language in the different spatial-temporal cultural areas. Therefore, the city of Venice becomes a theatre of experimentation for a reflection on the evolution of the grammatical expressions of a consolidated common language, from the small to the large scale. Within the intent to respond to the needs of Time, rules have been broken, dogmas and canons have been violated, witnessing a metamorphosis of expressions regarding a particular Era. In this metamorphosis, a semantic gap is sometimes determined between two deliberately explicit works; it happens when architecture consciously faces a critical situation in relation to its context. It is not a question of different styles, but of how the language has assimilated the context from the project or how it has been interpreted. Starting from the poetics and then from the action, in the sense of ποίησις, the two authors, Palladio and Muratori, will be read in relation to their interventions on the city and how their contributions interact in different ways in relation to the considered historical background. The theme of consolidated island town and marginality will be read throughout the symbiotic relationship between code and canon, thanks to the design comparison of two different case studies: the Giudecca area for Palladio and the San Giuliano’s one for Muratori. In a strict correlation with the city of Venice, the two projects will try to understand which will be the new dialogue to establish with pre-existing canons and how to find out groundbreaking codes with whom reading modernity in an innovative way.