Scarpa wanders through Venice, recounting the customs and secrets that only the natives know. With everything from practical advice for aspiring Venetian lovers to hints at where to find the best bacaro, the author waves the tourist in the right direction and relates the secret language needed to experience the real Venice.
'Every year, hundreds of books on the city are published, but none resembles this one' - Independent 'This gem of a book offers practical advice but in a distinctly lyrical tone. If you are lucky enough to be going there, take Venice is a Fish and you will want for nothing' - Sunday Telegraph Built on an inverted forest, paved with a tortoiseshell of boulders, Venice is a maze of tiny alleys, bridges and squares. Tiziano Scarpa wanders through the city, recounting the customs and secrets that only Venetians know. With everything from practical advice for aspiring Venetian lovers to hints at where to find the best bacaro, Scarpa waves the tourist in the right direction and, without naming a single restaurant, hotel or bar, relates the secret language needed to experience the real Venice. So ignore the street signs - why fight the labyrinth? Venice, the fish, is ready to swallow you whole.
One of Italy’s brightest literary lights reinvents travel writing with a seductive, intoxicating celebration of the magical saltwater city “Venice is a fish,” writes Tiziano Scarpa. “It’s like a vast sole stretched out against the deep. How did this marvelous beast make its way up the Adriatic and fetch up here, of all places?” Paying homage to his native city in a lyrical and evocative style, he guides readers down tiny alleys, over bridges, and through squares, daring us to lose ourselves, forget the guidebooks, and experience Venice as Venetians do. Venice Is a Fish provides no hotel ratings or museum hours. Instead, in a delightful initiation, Scarpa tells us how to balance while standing on a gondola; where lovers will find the best secret hiding places; the finer points of etiquette and navigation during an agua alta; and how best to defend ourselves from the pitiless beauty of one of the world’s most stimulating cities. Open Venice Is a Fish, and Scarpa’s magnificent images, secret history, and hidden lore unfold like a treasure map of the senses.
In the era of the Grand Tour, Venice was the cultural jewel in the crown of Europe and the epitome of decadence. This edited collection of eleven essays draws on a range of disciplines and approaches to ask how Venice’s appeal has affected Western culture since 1800.
Go beyond the ordinary with this remarkable travelogue and guidebook filled with spectacular color photography that showcases Venice’s magical beauty and hidden gems, from the Piazzo San Marco to the island of Giudecca, the banks of the Grand Canal to the Arsenal district—the second entry in the Hedonist’s Guide travel series. Combining essential insider details, cultural information, must-see attractions, and detailed maps with glorious custom photography, Magical Venice is the ultimate handbook for modern nomads, including both savvy travelers and novice tourists. Designed for twenty-first century globetrotters, Magical Venice features stylish graphics and an elegant visual design, as well as a breakdown of must-visit places, thematic double-page photographic spreads to help you discover and understand the city, and walking routes to explore each district away from the crowds. Every fascinating detail of Venice is revealed, from the splendor of its palaces, the beauty of its piazzettas, the romanticism of its bridges and canals, the delights of its gastronomy, the charm of its sestieri—the districts that make up the city of the Doges—and the wealth of its museums and its arts and crafts. Whether you prefer a more traditional visit or want to chart your own unique course, this user-friendly reference and coffee table book includes everything you need—and more: Discover the spirit of Venice as seen through the eyes of Philippe Starck Visit Carlo Scarpa's Olivetti showroom, Piazza San Marco Taste cicchetti in the city’s bacari Drink a bellini at Harry’s Bar Admire the gems of modern art in the baroque palace of Ca ’Pesaro Visit the latest contemporary constructions on the island of La Giudecca Learn about the phenomenon of aqua alta Take a walk in the hidden gardens of Venice Magical Venice offers inspiration and insight for armchair travelers and dreamers alike. Best of all, the gorgeous photography transforms the book into a keepsake that will transport you back to your favorite places and sights long after returning home. Experience Venice as never before with the Hedonist’s Guide!
The female musicians of the Instituto della Pietà play from a gallery in the church, their faces half hidden by metal grilles. They live segregated from the world. Cecilia, is a violinist who, during anguished, sleepless nights, writes letters to the mother she never knew, haunted by her and hating her by turns. She eats little and cannot sleep. But things begin to change when a new violin teacher arrives at the institute. The astonishing music of Vivaldi, the 'Red Priest', electrifies her and changes her attitude to life, compelling her to make a courageous choice.
An illustrated tribute to city dwelling surveys thousands of years of history and traces urban languages, customs, and economies, while providing mini essays on such topics as the Tower of Babel and SimCity.
Soft Living Architecture explores the invention of new architectures based on living processes. It crafts a unique intersection between two fast-developing disciplines: biomimicry and biodesign in architecture, and bioinformatics and natural computing in the natural sciences. This is the first book to examine both the theory and methodology of architecture and design working directly with the natural world. It explores a range of approaches from the use of life-like systems in building design to the employment of actual growing and living cell and tissue cultures as architectural materials - creating architecture that can change, learn and grow with us. The use of 'living architecture' is cutting-edge and speculative, yet it is also inspiring a growing number of designers worldwide to adopt alternative perspectives on sustainability and environmental design. The book examines the ethical and theoretical issues arising alongside case-studies of experimental practice, to explore what we mean by 'natural' in the Anthropocene, and raise deep questions about the nature of design and the design of nature. This provocative and at times controversial book shows why it will become ever more necessary to embrace living processes in architecture if we are to thrive in a sustainable future.
At first, I didn’t find fog – fog found me. Liminal, transformative and increasingly elusive – far from a simple cloud of water droplets, fog is a state of mind. As mist drifted through a copse of trees, turning a familiar place strange and otherworldly, Laura Pashby snapped a photograph and an obsession began. Pashby hunts for fog, walks and swims in it, explores its often pivotal role in literature, mythology and history, as well as its environmental significance. There has been a 50 per cent drop in 'fog events' in the past fifty years, fog is drifting away without us noticing and the ecological impact could be calamitous. As she journeys to the foggiest places she can find, Pashby immerses herself in Dartmoor’s dangerous fog, searches for the Scottish haar, experiences Venice’s magical mist, tell us the myths behind the River Severn’s fog and the shipwrecks it hides. It’s easy to get lost in fog, but sometimes it’s where imperceptible things can be found, including in ourselves. Chasing Fog is a captivating meditation on fog and mist, a love song to weather and nature’s power to transform.
From the myth of Arcadia through to the twenty-first century, ideas about sustainability – how we imagine better urban environments – remain persistently relevant, and raise recurring questions. How do cities evolve as complex spaces nurturing both urban creativity and the fortuitous art of discovery, and by which mechanisms do they foster imagination and innovation? While past utopias were conceived in terms of an ideal geometry, contemporary exemplary models of urban design seek technological solutions of optimal organisation. The Venice Variations explores Venice as a prototypical city that may hold unique answers to the ancient narrative of utopia. Venice was not the result of a preconceived ideal but the pragmatic outcome of social and economic networks of communication. Its urban creativity, though, came to represent the quintessential combination of place and institutions of its time. Through a discussion of Venice and two other works owing their inspiration to this city – Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital – Sophia Psarra describes Venice as a system that starts to resemble a highly probabilistic ‘algorithm’, that is, a structure with a small number of rules capable of producing a large number of variations. The rapidly escalating processes of urban development around our big cities share many of the motivations for survival, shelter and trade that brought Venice into existence. Rather than seeing these places as problems to be solved, we need to understand how urban complexity can evolve, as happened from its unprepossessing origins in the marshes of the Venetian lagoon to the ‘model city’ that endured a thousand years. This book frees Venice from stereotypical representations, revealing its generative capacity to inform potential other ‘Venices’ for the future.