Archive and site: the ghost of Peter Eisenman’s 1978 Cannaregio Ovest project in Venice

In this paper, I discuss Peter Eisenman’s unbuilt proposal for the Cannaregio Ovest district in Venice, and develop a speculative reading linking the project’s archive and the site. I account for different absences involved to visually represent the archive and site in a multi-layered and open-ended relation. Through a critical and creative reading of the archival material of the project and its underpinning discourse, in the light of the present of both its intended location and the debates around Venice’s built heritage, I reveal the potential of the archive as a tool to reimagine the experience of the city and to inform a critique of its conservation.

Dedicated to the memory of Jonathan Hill.