We propose that the bridge-museum is momentary, fluid and flexible in contrast with the fixed construction built throughout the long history of Venice. The existing Accademia bridge design has served beyond it’s original intended lifetime and a contemporary one can better serve the community. We chose to base the design of this bridge on the pre-existing temporal condition and create a flexible architecture changing with the light and the presence of the occupants.

The grand floor ‘bridge’ and the first floor museum possess a related structure. Both floors are very thin and consist of an aluminium honeycomb system which spans the fifty metres between the four steel framed core supports. The air-membrane skin covering the museum forms a symbiotic structural relationship with the honey-comb floor system in spanning the canal. Together they form an extremely lightweight and delicate structural system without the need for intermediate supports. The air pressure differential created through the building’s internal air conditioning system creates a lift effect assisting in the suspension of the bridge and museum, the entire building becoming lightweight. The challenge undertaken was to create architecture supported not only by the ground but by the air as well.

The interior is planned as a single flexible space. Interior and exterior wall are a soft polyester fabric instead of a fixed wall material, with transparency and hardness adjustable, significantly altering the appearance of internal space and external appearance. Audio and visual systems including ambient lighting are hidden within the floor structure, reacting with sound and/or light to the presence of those within the building. Layer of outside reflected has keeping interior light. The transparency of the facade under changing lighting conditions also assists in the communication of interior life to the outside world.