A Room with a View
The seminar will look at the cultural, economic, technological and spatial conditions as well as the temporary and recurring forms of living together in a family-run hotel in Venice. The hotel was opened in 1910 in a former palazzo on the Canale della Giudecca. Some of the rooms are still connected by doors and not all have an en suite bathroom. Furniture, paintings, silver and other pieces of art can be found in the corridors and common rooms, but there are no television sets in the simple rooms. Some rooms have a view across the canal to the Il Redentore church, designed by Andrea Palladio in 1576. Some guests have access to the roof terrace, which houses the washing machine along with other household objects and appliances as well as planters for propagating succulents.
Borrowing the title of a novel by the English writer E. M. Forster, the view from the room at the hotel gives rise to a scientific and artistic study of the makeup of the place, whose historical quality is to be analysed and contextualised in the present. Like the city of Venice, the hotel itself can hardly be saved. Discussions about safeguarding Venice coincide with the specifics of the accommodation whose level of comfort eludes the usual categories of hotel rating by neither being youth hostel nor Grand Hotel, while combining elements of both in a contradictory and unique way.
The seminar continues the Wie zusammen leben series at the Chair of Design and Housing, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism. It is held together with Sassa Trülzsch and is aimed at 13 students on all degree courses and faculties. It includes a preparatory workshop, an excursion to Venice in April 2022 and the follow-up and documentation in an exhibition/ publication. Sassa Trülzsch (MA) is an art historian and a freelance curatorial coach in the fields of fine arts, architecture and destination. In collaboration with architects, institutions, universities and companies, concepts for the spatial implementation of specific knowledge, individual presentation methods, designed documentation and structural site analyses are developed. The course is funded through the Bauhaus.Module programme.
Allocation: seminar, M.A. / M.F.A. / M.Sc. seminar (all faculties and courses)
Time: Summer semester 2022
Place: Venedig, Weimar
Tutors: Verena von Beckerath, Sassa Trülzsch
Guest contribution: Andrew Alberts
Participants: Greta App, Elisabeth Bley, Lena Geiselbrechtinger, Lara Grefer, Jonas König, Piet Krause, Vincent Mank, Anastasia Mirkina, Leon Schade, Paul Stockhausen, Olga Sulek, Felix Tepel, Leonhard von Zumbusch