murano glass museum

The Glass Museum cel­e­brates Murano, Italy as a sea-faring, 700 year old, artisan-glass island com­mu­nity. The museum is nes­tled between the sur­faces of land and water, meld­ing and medi­at­ing land and lagoon, water and sky.

Its inspi­ra­tion comes from the crys­talline land­fill; the infi­nite tex­tural reci­procity of the lagoon sur­face and its vibrant Venet­ian skies. Sited on the the water sur­face using recy­cled barges, its move­ment is medi­ated by the moods of the lagoon. And like Venice, its liv­ing reflec­tion is identity.

The Murano Glass Museum reap­pro­pri­ates a for­mer Venet­ian glass land­fill. The land­fill has been accu­mu­lat­ing glass scraps from hun­dreds of years of the worlds’s best arti­san glass blow­ers. It’s sand is cry­talline glass, and its dirt con­tains gems of ancient bro­ken shards of venet­ian chan­de­liers, glass­ware and sculpture.

The Murano Glass Museum is a com­pe­ti­tion entry for the Venice 2G com­pe­ti­tion, and was devel­oped with Glen Karpf for UC Berke­ley Archi­tec­ture Stu­dio taught by Nicholas Demon­chaux and Tim Culvahouse.