Campo d’Acqua

A Recreational Oasis in Venice, Italy

B.Arch Thesis | Drexel University

Campo d’Acqua reimagines the traditional Venetian campo as a floating civic space on water, shaped by research into how local Venetians gather, move, and participate in public life. Set within the historic Arsenale, the project responds to a city increasingly shaped by tourism and rising water by creating a resilient public space specifically for its local community. Programming becomes an architectural driver, layering recreation, dining, markets, performance, wellness, and everyday gathering, while strategies for sustainability, flood resilience, and locally responsive materiality inform how the architecture engages Venice’s unique environmental and cultural context.

A place for Venetians to gather, play, and find respite from the density and tourism of the city.

LAGOON

ITALY

VENICE

SITE: ARSENAL

Rooted in the theory of programmatic disjunction, the design layers unexpected uses and circulation to create spontaneity, discovery, and new opportunities for community.

Concept and Process

  • The existing Arsenale façades informed the walls of an “outside room” and used their arcade language as the backdrop for the intervention. The Venetian arcade is reinterpreted as a structural and spatial language, connecting the pavilion to the surrounding historic fabric.

  • Layered circulation creates multiple paths through the pavilion, encouraging discovery and unexpected encounters between programs.

  • The pavilion lifts toward its pedestrian and water approaches, creating a lightweight form shaped by movement, access, and Venice’s relationship to water.

  • By inserting horizontal planes that cut through the roofing surface, program is layered vertically and horizontally, allowing dining, recreation, performance, landscape, and circulation to overlap rather than exist as isolated uses.

  • Intimate moments bring the structure to a human level, like this seating banquette and planters at the base of the structural columns

The lifting of the buildings’ forms were inspired by the shape and buoyancy of the traditional Venetian gondola

Outlook deck underneath lawn, connecting to farmers market below, looking out over the Darsena water

Outlook deck underneath lawn, connecting to farmers market below, looking out over the Darsena water

Main double-height lobby with bespoke entry staircase connecting to restaurant above

Main double-height lobby with bespoke entry staircase connecting to restaurant above

Full swimming pool and recreational center on ground floor extending out into open air

Full swimming pool and recreational center on ground floor extending out into open air

Restaurant groin vault ceiling descends creating intimate contact with the structure, enclosed with curtain wall

Restaurant groin vault ceiling descends creating intimate contact with the structure, enclosed with curtain wall

A continuous biking, running, walking promenade circulates around the perimeter of the entire pavilion to provide waterfront activity around the site

The lawn side of the pavilion is an open-air urban park with flexible ground floor space for markets, exercise, gatherings, and an upper floor outlook deck that connects directly to the lawn above

AI-generated conceptual winter season, view from approaching site entrance

AI-generated conceptual winter season, view from approaching site entrance

AI-generated conceptual restaurant event activation, view from ampitheater

AI-generated conceptual restaurant event activation, view from ampitheater