The main program in this proposal is a publicly accessible copy of the State Archives of Venice, whch contains the world’s most comprehensive historical records of the period 700-1800 AD.In addition to the 56 miles of shelving required to house the collection, the 50,000sqf program includes other spaces appropriate to a new cultural center and meeting place for the city.
This new Public Archives is to be made as an “addition” to Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital, designed in 1964, for purposes of this project, to have been built in 1967 on the western waterfront in the San Giobbe neighborhood in northwest Venice. The hospital, largely dedicated to the care of acutely or teminally ill patients, was organized on three levels. Le Corbusier developed the unique pin-wheeling circulation diagram for the hospital, as well as the layered “mat” building, from his studies of the urban fabric of Venice.