Piazzale Roma
Venice, Italy
In this park for the 21st century, a bridge of faith rises from a landscape of contradictions where the parking garage, causeway, and bus terminal are at home amidst the delicate scale of Venice. Echoing many small arches nearby, it lifts you above the city’s flat plane to review its forms and uses living crafts, such as glassblowing, to make an optimistically modern structure leading to the future. From across the Grand Canal, the steel-truss bridge presents its face of cantilevered glass sections growing out of the neighboring brick and stone buildings.