OMA at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi

Photos
Delfino Sisto Legnani, Marco Cappelletti

For centuries, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi at the foot of the Rialto Bridge has occupied a place at the mercantile heart of Venice. First constructed in 1228 (and reconstructed after a fire in 1506), it was a trading post for Germanic merchants and later a customs house under Napoleon before its conversion to a post office under Mussolini. With the completion of a major restoration project by OMA, it has now begun a new phase of life.

OMA was commissioned by the building’s owner, the Benetton family, to transform it into a department store which will be operated by Hong Kong-based DFS (which has itself commissioned the retail fit-out by London-based Jamie Fobert Architects). OMA’s work entailed making what the architects describe as a “finite number of strategic interventions” into a constructional hybrid that mixed the diverse techniques of five centuries – including extensive use of concrete in the 1930s. Despite the extensive alterations that had been made to the 9000-square-metre building, it was listed as a protected monument in 1987, further complicating the architects’ task.

OMA’s major moves were to provide vertical circulation, and to define a sequence of public spaces and paths though the building. “Each intervention is conceived as an excavation through the existing mass, liberating new perspectives and unveiling the real substance of the building to its visitors, as an accumulation of authenticities.”

A nineteenth-century pavilion roof over the courtyard has been renovated, and a steel and glass floor structure inserted beneath to make a new events space. A large timber rooftop terrace gives views of the city and, like the courtyard, is a public venue, open and accessible at all times.

Existing entrances into the courtyard have been retained, and new entrances created from the Campo San Bartolomeo and the Rialto. Rooms are configured to respect original sequences; crucial historic elements like the corner rooms remain untouched.

The Fondaco once boasted frescoes by artists such as Titian, and OMA intends that the walls of the gallerias will again become a surface for artworks. In such ways, it says, the project responds to the building’s history but “avoids nostalgic reconstructions of the past and demystifies the ‘sacred’ image of a historical building”.

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