Condominium Via Venezia
Marina di Carrara, 1957-1965
The Condominium on Via Venezia by Edoardo Detti was an ongoing project from 1957 through 1965. Around this time, Detti had been newly appointed as the Director of the Department of Urban Planning at the University of Florence (in 1955) and had been working on several projects, including the Grand Hotel Minerva, with Carlo Scarpa.
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Located in the province of Massa-Carrara, an area rich with white marble-- the famous Carrara marbles of Michelangelo-- Marina di Carrara is a small port town with a population of roughly 15,000 inhabitants. Starting in 1957, Detti had already begun the sketches for the building though it took him three more years to draw up the final solutions for the project.
The characteristically brutalist building plays with a geometry of deep banded balconies and logias combined with a system of projecting cornices and square windows. The building was designed with the concept of carving out or removing parts of the traditional cube. Removing as much as possible of the traditional geometry while still clearly portraying the shape in a concise and modern way. The relationship between the volume and the system of openings serves as the organizational system of the building. The structure has seven floors within two main pieces, in addition to a connecting mezzanine. The square building at the front, originally intended for commercial use, and the long linear building running along Via Geribaldi, which houses the majority of the residential program. The two pieces are connected by a passageway that serves as both a connection point between Via Venezia and Via Geribaldi, and an upper level balcony between the two buidings.
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While the outside form of the building presented itself as a modern addition at the time, the interior in comparison, is fairly traditional. Each floor contains 3 apartments of either 6 or 4 rooms, each with their own balcony, and each divided into living and sleeping area. The interior stairwells are decorated with both wood and traditional Carrera marble.
The reinforced concrete of the building is applied in a masonry like manner, emphasizing the geometry of the building as well as the deep banded openings. This, along with the floating roof and mezzanine, show a distinct Le Corbusier influence on the work of Detti. Below you can also see the influence the building had on later buildings in the neighborhood, both in material and form.
Detti was known for his extensive pre design and planning process, largely due to his background in Urban Design. In a series of his preliminary sketches we can start to work through his design process. Although he seems to have been interested in the idea of the deconstruction of the cube from the beginning, we can see this transition from a more linear and organized system to the scattered, seemingly random system of openings that the building now has. Although these openings are seemingly random from the outside, we know that these openings correspond to the program of the buildings on the inside.
