GHETTO: Sanctuary for Sale // Henriquez Companions Architects

Textual content description supplied by the architects.

The theme of the 2021 Venice Structure Biennale, “How will we reside collectively?” encourages people to contemplate the position of the architect in creating areas for inclusion, questioning the architect’s position as a “cordial convener and a custodian of the spatial contract”. GHETTO, our theoretical venture, imagines a bodily conduit for the redistribution of wealth from vacationers to refugees by transferring the fairness garnered within the growth course of in a mutually helpful method.

Whereas this venture explores one iteration of this redistribution mannequin, it may be utilized throughout quite a lot of geographies, scales and contexts to supply a myriad of social advantages.

In collaboration with UNHCR and the ECC, Henriquez Companions Architects imagines GHETTO, a theoretical architectural venture which proposes the resettlement of 1,000 refugees into Venice financed by the sale of timeshare condominiums for vacationers from America.

The inspiration for the venture got here from the positioning of the ECC exhibition in Palazzo Mora positioned in Cannaregio, dwelling of the Jewish ghetto, and our need as an instance our studio’s credo that structure has the potential to be a poetic expression of social justice.

Within the effort to discover our accountability as world residents to take care of each other and to discover monetary mechanisms that redistribute fairness to supply social advantages, GHETTO is a theoretical collection of 4 architectural islands that demonstrates these intentions by way of an revolutionary financial mannequin.

Every of the islands is positioned close to certainly one of 4 compelling websites: The Venetian ghetto, Stazione di Santa Lucia, Piazza San Marco, and the Arsenale. These websites have been rigorously chosen to parallel 4 key-influencing elements in Venice: the Jewish ghetto as venture inspiration, the refugee disaster, Venetian over-tourism, and difficult the standard position of the architect..