Venice is a city with a proud past, reflected in the numerous cultural activities that still pervade it, but that, in recent years, it is seeing its identity changing. It is one of the greatest architectural monuments of humanity, and as such, it would suffer in being compared with an ambitious new building, that maybe instead of help in maintaining its position as unique city in the world, would ultimately make it only more common. It is indeed a jealous place, which is not revealed immediately but in fragmented glimpses, that lives in symbiosis with the environment, and finds its strength in unity and coexistence of all its parts, resembling de facto to a single and continuous painting. Its urban grid is dense, labyrinthine, which untieds only at key points such as squares, or the Canal Grande.
The project dialogues ideologically with Venice, and it is conformed like a real city, with its openings, its views, its chaotic appearance, but actually ordered, and especially with all its vital functions. It merges its most typical features, such as classrooms, libraries and offices, with some features characteristic of the city, such as shops, bars, restaurants, supermarkets, banks, barber shops, gyms and cultural centers, in a complete urban system. The whole complex then does not present itself as an orderly place, where everything is sectored, but as a flexible place where the position, apparently disorganized, of all its functions it continuously keeps it alive, and crucially, encourages the exchange of ideas and of views, typical of an university.