Porosity is a measure that materially expresses empty space as a proportion of the whole, defining the internal voids and external limits of an architectural object. DIP13 will engage with porosity as an architectural metric, conducting research into how built interventions can affect the nature of established social and physical boundaries, dissolving the lines between internal and external, in and out.

Our testing ground will be the Giardini della Biennale: a non-porous territory in Venice. For half of the year, the events of the Biennale activate the Giardini. Throughout the summer, thousands of visitors come to see these exhibitions and the area is in constant, energetic flux. In the winter, however, it hibernates completely, hidden behind an imposing iron fence, unapproachable and cut-off from the adjacent neighbourhoods.

Some locals say that the city stops where the Giardini starts. Maintained by the countries that own them, the permanent pavilions within the gardens are uninsulated and unheated. For the most part, these nations have no interest in making them available for use during the winter months. The Giardini are therefore always disconnected from the rest of the city: the fenced-in and tightly controlled Biennale form a barrier to their surroundings during summer and throughout winter all life behind the fence seems to vanish.

We will focus on designing small-scale architectural interventions that manipulate the porosity of the Giardini and exploring the potential that these objects have to inform larger urban configurations. Each proposal will be negotiated within the larger project of the overall unit – the transformation of the Giardini from a large, disconnected and exclusive area of Venice into a year-round, freely accessible site of communal benefit. Students will precisely map the site itself, develop physical models and design their own, precise architectural interventions.

Taking advantage of this non-site as a locus of open speculation, we will conclude the year by developing a manuscript of porosities – a critical and shareable tool to invert the logic of the Giardini, moving from a localised point of ‘imported geographies’ to machine for global cultural export.