This extraordinary looming monolith on the Piazzale Roma provides offices and a grandly scaled public entrance for the Venetian law courts
Many of the spacious foyers, the salles des pas perdus, which gave entrance to the grand law courts of the 19th century, have since been withdrawn from public access. This extraordinary looming monolith on the Piazzale Roma reverses the trend, providing offices and a grandly scaled public entrance for the Venetian law courts. The towering proportions and striking, almost windowless, black copper cladding of the building give it a forbidding quality despite its vernacular pitched roof form, and visitors enter in a Dantesque fashion, scuttling beneath a somewhat oppressive cantilevered porch, which puts the doorway in deep shadow. However, once within the building, the gleaming white interior soars seven storeys, traversed by a hanging black staircase that beckons the visitor upwards.
This case study is part of Typology: Law Court. Read the full article here
