Giovanni Sardi (6 September 1863 – 26 June 1913) was an Italian architect, mainly active in his native Venice; his designs were an eclectic adaptation of gothic and byzantine elements.

Biography

He was born to a craftsman of limited income. In 1875, he was able to enroll at the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under

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and the engineer Giovanni Antonio Romano. In 1898, he was commissioned by the hotelier Giulio Grünwald with the enlargement of his property, then known as the Hotel Bauer-Grünwald. The facade was remade in 1901 in a Venetian gothic or

neo-gothic style Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

. Sardi next major commission was the design of the Grand Hotel Excelsior in the Lido of Venice (1907-08). The large resort hotel including a mix of fanciful references to both gothic and

Moorish architecture Moorish architecture is a style within Islamic architecture which developed in the western Islamic world, including al-Andalus (on the Iberian peninsula) and what is now Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia (part of the Maghreb). The term "Moorish" com ...

. The prestige of that construction also recommended him to more projects for the Lido, which was bustling with construction of beach villas, such as Villa Pasqualin (1912), now Villa Lisa, and Villa Fanna (1910-11). In the Venice of his day, his competition as an architect included Giovanni Sicher,

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, and Antonio Pedrazzoli. In 1915, he designed the ''Teatro Italia (1915), now a supermarket, in central Venice. In the terrafirme of the Veneto, mainly building around the area of Asolo and

Treviso Treviso ( , ; vec, Trevixo) is a city and ''comune'' in the Veneto region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 84,669 inhabitants (as of September 2017). Some 3,000 live within the Veneti ...

, he built a number of villas, of which few exist at all or as designed, including villa Guillion Mangilli in Cornuda (1903), villa Delord at Casella d’Asolo (1906-07), villa Boato in Mirano (1912-13), and the villino Guetta at Santa Maria della Rovere. He built himself a villa in Mogliano Veneto, near Treviso. He also designed the elementary school in the town. He died unexpectedly from an infection in 1913.Treccani Encyclopedia
Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (2017), entry by Guido Zucconi and Martina Carraro.

Gallery

LIDO - Villa Lisa.jpg, Villa Lisa Lido Villa Fanna.jpg, Villa Fanna File:Hotel Excelsior (Venedig)-Nordostseite.jpg, Hotel Excelsior, Lido of Venice File:Dorsoduro, 30100 Venezia, Italy - panoramio (34).jpg, Hotel Bauer on the Grand Canal File:Teatro Italia (Venedig).jpg, Teatro Italia

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sardi, Giovanni 1863 births 1913 deaths People from Venice Italian architects 20th-century Italian architects Architects from Venice