As you walk, you trail your fingers over the concrete at your side: friable and gritty, the surface scratches your fingertips lightly, exciting in its uneven regularity. A seam passes, the protruding globule of a moment of concrete flow rendered eternal. Once past this frozen imperfection, the surface becomes smooth, almost soft as your hand moves over its extensive gloss.
When a material has been "subjected to any kind of treatment, its primitive type will be
modified...the type no longer rests at its primary stage of development, but has passed through a more or less distinct metamorphosis. When from this secondary or, according to the circumstances, variously graduated modification the motive now comes into a new material transformation...the form emerging from it will be a mixed result, one that expresses its primordial type...and all stages of modification that preceded the last formation." (Gottfried Semper. Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts, p258)
In order for a project the scale of the Venice Hospital to move forward in a city as historic and phenomenally particular as Venice, consciously creating a legible connection between the haptic qualities of a space and its methods of formation is completely essential; disconnect between methods of creation and methods of habitation will
doom the Hospital to obscurity once again. To that end, a series of studies into the materiality imbued by various sorts and configurations of formwork and finishing; these studies have been entrained into my process of design and detailing for several months.
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