The identity of Venice captured in a house designed by Elena Martucci

Architect: Arch. Elena Martucci 
Project name: Cannaregio 5251
Location: Venice, Italy

This small house in the Cannaregio district of Venice tells its own story and that of its surroundings, multiplying and reinterpreting the signs of the lagoon city. It is a terracielo house, an independent housing typology developed on several floors, typical of Italian historic centers. Elena Martucci's project removed the traces of previous renovations to recompose the fragments of a unified narrative. Venice can be read in the materials: in the pinkish beech that lines the staircase, from the Cansiglio Plateau; in the Istrian stone laid in the bathroom floor, the same stone used for bridges, buildings and monuments during the Serenissima period. Venetian light is found on the burnished brass of the island in the kitchen, while the stained glass surface of the dining table recalls the water of the canals. With the new intervention, the removal of false ceilings reveals the interweaving of wooden beams, and the absence of plaster on some walls restores the original texture of the bricks, bringing back the building's authentic material.