Vault for the Venice Biennale of Architecture

Venice, Italy

Structural typology: ART
Date: July, 2016
Owner: La Biennale di Venezia
Scope: detailed design and construction support
Architect: Solano Benítez | gabinete de arquitectura

This vault was the contribution of the Paraguayan architect Solano Benítez for the international exhibition of the Venice Biennale of Architecture, with which he was awarded the Gold Lion for Best Participant. The jury highlighted “harnessing simple materials, structural ingenuity and unskilled labor to bring architecture to underserved communities.”

The structure is a framed vault with 7.68 m span and 7.15 m high, whose members are made of bricks and concrete and the measures of the cross sections are 15x12 and 19x12 cm. Furthermore, a catenarygeometry has been used, which is the funicular form of the dead load and the span-to-rise ratio is very low, which hardly causes horizontal thrusts to the delicate Venetian foundation.

The scope of Fhecor included the conceptual design of the structure together with the architect Solano Benítez, as well as the development of the detailed design and the site supervision. In this last stage, the most crucial operation was the removal of the falsework. Just few days before the Exhibition Inauguration.



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