CASINO’ DI VENEZIA – CA’ NOGHERA
The Casinò 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 populate the neighboring fields.
The new VIP room of the Casinò will welcome the high-rollers: loyalized customers who are picked up by a driver at the nearby Tessera airport and - after intense game rounds - returned to boarding for the late night flight.
Designing a gambling hall means producing a large, dark box. The visitor must forget the passage of time, lose contact with atmospheric events.
The experience of the scenographic and communicative apparatus that we have learned to recognize as architecture 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.
Responding to the logistical and functional needs of the activity hosted into the building, the project intends to formulate an aesthetic statement on the landscape in which it is located.
Inside, it merely provides a room large enough to be flooded with gaming tables and slot machines.
The exotic garden of the roof terrace 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 long iridescent façade reflects a blurred image of the surroundings and is colored with the variations of natural light.
The luminous totems that emerge along the main road recall archetypal figures of the territory (the belltower, the water tank) and transfigure them into their lysergic version.