An international shouting match is underway over the fate of the city everyone loves but no one wants to live in: Venice. It started back in 2008, after Venice ran out of cash to maintain its more famous monuments. To cover some of the repairs on the Palazzo Ducale and the Bridge of Sighs (through which Giacomo Casanova made a famous escape), the local administration allowed the restorers to raise money by selling advertising space on their building scaffolds. This caused mild irritation when the sponsors were Moët Chandon and Bulgari. I, for one, did not mind seeing Julianne Moore’s pretty face touting Bulgari jewels from my gondola in the Grand Canal.
Last summer, however, Coca-Cola bought some space, and the aesthetic world went mad. Coca-Cola’s spokesman may have stretched the truth when he defended its Venetian ads by saying, “When we advertise, we are always conscious of local and artistic heritage.”
Of all people to complain about defacing public space, who should sign the letter composed by Britain’s Venice in Peril Fund but a bunch of architects who have done more substantial damage to our cities’ prospects than any temporary product-hawking on a scaffold? Venice in Peril’s chairwoman, Anna Somers Cocks, informed the press: “Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, and Norman Foster visited and were aghast [at the ads].” Foster, who gave London the giant television known as City Hall, and his colleagues were so aghast that they signed the letter accusing the Venice mayor’s office of “ruining Venice’s beauty.” (Was not the Thames beautiful once, oh Norman?)
Read the rest of this article on Taki’s Magazine.
