Just two years after the acquisition of Palazzo Grassi, François Pinault expands his cultural project in Venice through the restoration of Punta della Dogana.

The warehouses of the Dogana da Mar, a commercial space completed in its current form in 1682, were redesigned by the architect Giuseppe Benoni on the basis of the pre-existing fifteenth-century architectural complex and conceived to move the customs operational headquarters from the Arsenale area. Punta della Dogana is located in a strategic point of Venice: at the entrance to the Grand Canal, near Baldassarre Longhena's Basilica Santa Maria della Salute, from where both San Marco and the island of San Giorgio Maggiore can be admired. 

Punta della Dogana has a triangular plan that has remained unchanged over time. On top of its tower, a sculptural group depicting two Atlantes supports a gilded bronze terrestrial globe, on top of which stands the statue of Fortuna that indicates the direction in which the wind is blowing. At the end of the 1980s, the warehouse fell into a state of decay until 2007, when a tender was issued by the Municipality of Venice for the protection and recovery of this emblematic monument of the city. François Pinault participated and won with a redevelopment project signed by Tadao Ando. The Japanese architect conceived a renovation project based on the idea of finding a balance between history and technological innovation: in just over a year, he brings back to light the original brick walls and wooden trusses, he works on the foundations to shelter the building from both humidity and the effects of high tides, and he transforms the space into a spectacular and yet discreet location. 

Inside the building, Tadao Ando worked on the elements that had been modified over time by eliminating the modern additions, juxtaposing contemporary materials and shapes such as the exposed concrete walls. He also creates a reinforced concrete cube, placed in the central space, giving the concrete the dignity of a noble material. This singular space constitutes a geometric parenthesis that vertically crosses the center of the triangular plan of Punta della Dogana. This full-height concrete box, the beating heart of the entire environment, presents the combination of a traditional Venetian outdoor paving, in masegni, and the reinforced concrete walls, smooth and silky to the touch.

On the outside, the functional style of the original Dogana da Mar, devoid of superfluous decorations, was maintained. Tadao Ando intervened only on the openings to insert a reference to a particularly important architect for contemporary Venice: the orthogonal steel grids which cover up the external openings, in fact, are a reference to the door of the Olivetti shop in the Procuratie Vecchie overlooking Piazza San Marco, designed by Carlo Scarpa.

The restoration by the Japanese architect, completed in 2009, allows for a "walk through art" to experience simultaneously art, architecture and city of Venice, which can be admired through the large crescent-shaped windows. Punta della Dogana, born with an exclusively commercial function, was transformed and its rooms frees as much as possible in order to provide spaces that can host the monumental works of the Pinault Collection

Take a virtual tour of Punta della Dogana on Google Arts&Culture