The Forms of Dialectic. Gianugo Polesello and the “Venice Laboratory”

The issue of the Venice’s “dimension” has always been central to the theoretical and design reflections of Gianugo Polesello developed within the research activities of the “Venice Laboratory,” understood not only in an operational sense, referring to interventions to be carried out, but also and above all, as an “‘almost-mental’ dimension,” which is essentially the result of a general “culture of the city” and of the city of Venice in particular.

Revisiting this research today means demonstrating the need and urgency to rethink the project of the relationship between the city and the non-urbanized territory, moving away from an abstract “isotropy” that aims to dissolve distinctions by theorizing a quantitatively and qualitatively homogeneous development. We propose rethinking it instead as construction of a system of heterogeneous “parts” which, assuming the “lagoon unity” of Venice as a settlement paradigm, to say it with Polesello, “coordinates within itself different, distinct elements, mediating along a scale that ranges from wildness to total artifice.”

In the wake of these reflections, the essay proposes a more general inquiry into what can be considered the “legacy of the Modern” and its relevance for contemporary times, with intentions that aim for — not so much reformist “orthodoxies” or ideological totalitarianism, but rather — a careful “heterodoxy” attentive to thought and figures that have represented an alternative vision of modernity. Precisely this “other modern” which, in our opinion, has its roots in the full acceptance of discontinuity, contradictions and conflicts as indispensable conditions for a new idea of architecture and city.