The creation of Venice, Los Angeles began with the destruction of its original coastal salt marshes, reshaped into a canal city inspired by Venice, Italy. Over time, the city’s initial vision was consumed by the larger urban sprawl of Los Angeles. Yet from this disrupted landscape, Venice evolved into a cultural epicenter—a thriving, diverse ecosystem of subcultures echoing the interdependence of the lost wetlands. The project views the site not as a static place, but as a compound of temporal layers—past, present, and speculative futures in constant interplay.

This proposal seeks to excavate and reimagine meaning through architecture, interpreting the site as an allegory. Programmatic elements—treated as fragmented, disparate entities—populate the site to create a rich, layered whole. The central ambition is to transform the land into a salt marsh breeding ground, with growth laboratories, public educational spaces, and conference halls that emerge and intertwine through a shifting terrain.

The project design emphasizes spatial unraveling—from above and below, from the ground to inner voids—offering a dynamic, unfolding experience. Public spaces interact with erupting labs and descending lecture halls that expose tectonic and structural shifts, culminating in a dislodged library that distorts traditional spatial logic.

By resisting linear design approaches, the proposal highlights the coexistence of time and difference. It celebrates heterogeneity and complexity, encouraging connections between seemingly incongruent programs and histories. Architecture becomes a medium for reconnection and speculation, drawing on all layers of a site’s identity.

Ultimately, the project reclaims Venice as an ecological and cultural palimpsest—a space where difference is embraced, transformation is continuous, and architecture acts not as a final product, but as an evolving landscape of memory, community, and possibility.