CNR Headquarter Arsenale
New headquarters of the National Research Centre in Venice in the halls 101-104 of the “Novissima”
After centuries of living in harmony with the city, the Venice Arsenale fell into a state of abandonment and neglect after the 1970s. Only in recent years have new productive activities begun to settle here: in 2010 the new headquarters of the CNR – National Research Centre, and in 2012 the Consorzio Venezia Nuova decided to establish the future home of the operations centre of the MOSE project here.
The Arsenale is destined to become the most important business park and research centre in the city, and home to more than 10,000 highly skilled professionals.
The new home of the CNR, with laboratories, conference rooms and offices, is situated inside one of the large vast warehouses of the Arsenale, last renovated during the nineteenth century by the Austrians. The warehouses are modular, 18 meters wide and 30 meters long and 12 meters in height. They face south onto the basin of the Arsenale, the dock of the Novissima.
The project calls for the layout of the offices in parallel blocks that repeat the rhythms and dimensions of the ancient “galee”, ships powered by sail and oar once constructed inside these spaces.
The rhomboid section of these two-storey volumes, 30/40 meters long and 7 m wide allows overhead light flooding in through rooftop skylights to illuminate the spaces on the first floor.
The various office blocks are connected by a walkway suspended 3 meters above the floor, at different points perforating the walls that currently occlude the sixteenth century arches. The materials are simple and suitable to an industrial context: galvanised metal and anthracite coloured composite panels.
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