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2020 CASINO

—Projects

CASINO

Venice (Italy), 2020

 

The Casino has grown through transformation and disorderly addition of various warehouses without quality. All of these Padania Classics occupy a triangular plot between the canal along the Statale 14 Triestina and the agricultural land. Grasshoppers frequently show up in the offices.

 

Designing a gambling hall means producing a large, dark box. The visitor must forget the passage of time, lose contact with atmospheric events. The new VIP room of the casino will welcome the high-rollers: customers who are picked up by a driver at the nearby Tessera airport and – after exhausting game rounds – returned to boarding with a decidedly lightened baggage.

 

The experience of the scenographic and communicative apparatus that we have learned to recognize through Learning from Las Vegas encounters some difficulties here: we are not immersed in the strip but in the Venetian countryside, and Italian law imposes severe restrictions on the promotion of gambling.

 

In the absence of a moral judgment on the activities it hosts, the project instead formulates an aesthetic judgment on the landscape in whitch it is located. Inside, it merely provides a room large enough to be flooded with gaming tables and slot machines. The exotic garden on the roof terrace is a life raft from the audiovisual nightmare below and returns a surprising contact with the sky.

 

Outside, the intervention tries to give a humble contribution to the collective project of the contemporary city, stemming its disorder and defining a new limit. The luminous totems that emerge along the main road recall archetypal figures of the territory (the bell tower, the water tank) and transfigure them into their lysergic version.

 

addition to the Casino of Ca’ Noghera

in collaboration with Enrico Dusi, Sinergo

preliminary and final design, construction management

client: Casino di Venezia Gioco S.p.a.

surface: 1.000 sqm

photos: Marco Cappelletti

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Salottobuono

Corso Sempione, 33
20145 Milano, I
office@salottobuono.com
www.salottobuono.com

Salottobuono is an architectural office based in Milan, directed by Matteo Ghidoni.

 

The studio’s work ranges from urban design to architecture, from temporary installations to exhibition design. Salottobuono is also constantly engaged in research, publishing and teaching activities. Always active in the international arena, the studio is currently in charge of developing public space and landscape redevelopment projects on behalf of several Italian administrations. Salottobuono relies on the collaboration of a network of specialists for the development of all phases of the project in its structural, plant engineering, economic and site management aspects. It also collaborates with consultants on landscape and environmental sustainability issues.

 

Matteo Ghidoni obtained his Master Degree in architecture at IUAV Faculty of Architecture in Venice in 2002. He was a founding partner of the research agency Multiplicity from 2002 to 2006. His work with Multiplicity was exhibited at Kunstwerke in Berlin (2003), the Venice Biennale (2003), the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris (2003), the ZKM in Karlsruhe (2004) and the Beijing Biennial (2004).

 

Ghidoni founded the architectural office Salottobuono in 2007. Salottobuono has served as editor of the Instructions and Manuals section of Abitare magazine
(2007-10) and as creative director of Domus magazine (2011, 2012). The office has taken part in the Venice Biennale (2008, 2012, 2014), and designed the Italian Pavilion in 2010. Salottobuono published the Manual of Decolonization (2010) and Fundamental Acts (2016).

 

Matteo Ghidoni is currently Visiting Lecturer at the MIT Department of Architecture and Adjunct Professor at Politecnico in Milan. He taught design studios at the Faculty of Architecture in Genova, at IUAV Faculty of Architecture in Venice, the Royal Danish Academy of Arts in Copenhagen and the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotà. He has given guest lectures at several schools and institutions including the Berlage Institute, Berkeley, TU Wien, Vlaams Architectuurinstituut in Antwerp, Columbia University and USoA Miami. He has been studio leader at the Venice Studio organized by the Melbourne School of Architecture and at the Porto Academy hosted at FAUP.

 

In 2014 he was invited by Rem Koolhaas, director of the Venice Biennale, to participate in the Monditalia section with the research project Ground Floor Crisis. Among the recent projects designed and built by Ghidoni there are the winning proposal for a temporary restaurant for the 25th Biennale Interieur in Kortrjik, Belgium (2016), the pavilion for the Mèxtropoli Festival in Mexico City (2017), the e-flux pavilion for the Milano ArchWeek (2018), the new Urban Center for the city of Milan (2019) and the new addition to the Venice Casino in Ca’ Noghera (2020). His project for the market square of Sant’Agostino (Ferrara), designed in collaboration with Enrico Dusi and completed in 2020, has been awarded the prestigious Gubbio Prize as the best national intervention on an area of historical interest.

 

Since 2010, Ghidoni has been co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of San Rocco, an independent international publication about architecture. The editors of San Rocco were received the Icon Award in 2012 as the best emerging architecture practice. In 2012 and 2013, the magazine was awarded two grants from the Graham Foundation.