The Ministry of Ground is an architecture that speculates on the importance of dredged material and its reappropriation within the Venice Lagoon. A constantly evolving floating terrazzo landscape is formed out of dredged masonry debris and silt, dug from the Venetian canals. This landscape is made up of square components formed by a combination of Venice’s digital twitter data and flooding information. An algorithm then rewrites the dredging route in Venice, based on a hierarchy of architecture at risk, turning Venice into a digital feed.

Each square is created in the specification of a performance space. A series of parameters are set out to manipulate the properties of acoustics and lighting based on the terrazzo finish and building methods. The presence of a performance space allows for Venice to cater for a more 24-hour economy, promoting a new narrative within the city. Due to the constant flow of dredged material each square operates as a three month residency, after which the space transitions into that of a dredged archive, with the building materials of Venice represented in the terrazzo specification. This ingrained archive is combined with dredged artefacts from the canals creating an almost 'un-curated' archive of Venice.