Death In Venice

David Chipperfield bequeaths the city a legacy in stone with a sober extension of the San Michele island cemetery

- Christopher Stocks

Back in 1998, David Chipperfield Architects (DCA) beat 145 other contenders to win a global competition for an extension to the Venetian island cemetery of San Michele. Thanks to the vagaries of Italian funding and bureaucracy, work didn’t begin until 2004. Another 14 years on, and the second (and potentially, last) phase of a revised scheme – including a new dock to supplement the existing pontoon on the island’s west side, and an administrative building– is now complete.

San Michele has been the city’s sole burial ground since 1837, and within its wave-lapped walls lie the tombs of generations of Venetians, as well as some illustrious foreigners, including ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev, composer Igor Stravinsky and poet Ezra Pound. After nearly 200 years of internments, the cemetery was running out of space, so the 1998 competition called for new columbariums, a chapel and a crematorium, plus an addition that would have seen an entirely new island constructed alongside the old.