A cemetery extension located on an island between Venice and Murano seeks to redefine some of the original qualities of this place, while offering a greater sense of the lagoon context. The San Michele Cemetery, Venice’s principal cemetery, is located on an island between Venice and Murano. This historic site has been in continuous development for over four hundred years but has recently evolved to a point where the romantic image of its outer face is in contrast to its interior municipal character. In order to address this obvious imbalance, the proposal seeks to redefine some of the cemetery’s original physical qualities.
Text: David Chipperfield Architects
Photo: Stefan Tuchila
This article was published in zeppelin magazine number 95.
In the first phase, currently in construction, the burial grounds of the current cemetery are complemented by the construction of a series of new courtyards and a chapel. In contrast to the existing rows of tombs, the proposed scheme offers a new arrangement of buildings, walls, tombs, and landscape. Rather than repeating the structure of walls and tombs in a linear manner with a regularity that tends to become rigidity, an organisational structure has been developed which groups the new elements to form a greater sense of solidity. The first courtyard has been completed as a prototype and opened to the public in September 2007.
This courtyard, called “the courtyard of the four Evangelists” because of the presence of four internal sub-courtyards of different sizes with different but similar characteristics, has basalt-clad walls and pavements with inlaid text from the four gospels and a black exposed concrete colonnade.
The second phase is the construction of a new island, running parallel to the existing cemetery but separated by a new canal. This new island will feature tomb buildings conceived as simple sculpted blocks, together with a series of gardens at water level. Unlike the remainder of San Michele, which is built higher above the water line and surrounded by a wall, this new island seeks to create a more open, accessible monument providing a greater sense of place and context within Venice and the lagoon.
