Learning From Roma

The exhibition opening at MAXXI is the result of an international workshop comprising twelve Italian and thirteen international universities whose task was to produce readings, visions and projects for the Rome of the future. The  “Roma 20-25: New Life Cycles for the Metropolis”  project draws inspiration from the 1978  “Roma Interrotta” exhibition. Thirty-five years ago, twelve renowned architects were asked to design Rome’s urban development by using  Nolli’s map  from the 18th century, as if Rome’s urban development had been “interrupted”,  imagining that Rome had stopped two and a half centuries before. Going back in time, they planned the city over again. A mosaic of interpretations and proposals on many themes, from architecture to landscape, from infrastructures to lifestyles, for which each of the twenty-five universities invited analyzed and designed a macro measuring 10 km per side. The idea of assigning this task to this grou...

Mario Palanti  was an Italian architect who designed important buildings in the capital cities of both  Argentina  and  Uruguay .  During the period 1909-1919  he designed the  Palacio Salvo  in  Montevideo , and produced a large number of drawings for monumental buildings that were never built. In the final period of his work, after he returned to live in Italy in 1930, he undertook a series of projects that never materialised.  In the shadow of Italian Fascism,  Mario Palanti  saw an opportunity to transform the skyline of the Italian capital by pandering to the egotistical ambitions of a dictator. Ultimately the extent of his vision was matched only by his failure. Arriving in  Italy  before him, with an Argentinian Greyhound as a gift to the dictator, was his proposed design for L’Eternale, a 330metre high, 70,000sqm skyscraper of epic proportions mooted for the centre of  Rome , a tower which ...

In 1978 twelve international architects participated in the design competition for a “New Rome” based on the city’s historical center. Titled Roma Interotta (Rome Interrupted), the project assigned each architect a section Nolli ’s famous plan for Rome from 1748, from which they would develop a fictional project. The project, which was based on the distant quality of Nolli’s map that documented a condition long lost, posed a strange prompt for designs in a liminal space that did not exist. Still, many teams engaged real aspects of the city, past and present.  The endeavour was meant as a criticism of the nineteenth-century urban development of Rome, when it became the capital of a united Italy.   Aldo Rossi , for example, updates the Baths of Caracalla by quipping them with modern heating and cooling systems while Colin Rowe attempted to “rebuild” the Palatine Hill, using imported Roman precedents. Others, however, ignored the original Roman site altogether. Leon Krier...

"Rome is our point of departure and reference. It is our symbol or, if you wish, our myth.  We dream of a Roman Italy, that is to say wise, strong, disciplined, and imperial.  Much of that which was the immortal spirit of Rome rises again in Fascism:  the Fasces are Roman; our organization of combat is Roman, our pride and our courage is Roman: Civis romanus sum.  It is necessary, now, that the history of tomorrow, the history we fervently wish to create, not be a contrast or a parody of the history of yesterday.  The Romans were not only warriors, but formidable builders who could challenge, as they did challenge, their time."   – Benito Mussolini, 1922 To create his dream of a 'Third Rome' Mussolini employed architects, archeologists and city planners to restore and rearrange the Eternal City so that it could be viewed in all of its majesty and modernity from the window of a modern automobile speeding down a newly widened street. This envolved...

33 מטרים מתחת לפני הקרקע, בתחתית בור מרופד בטון, הארכיאולוג גילברטו פגאני מגרד עפר מקורה חרוכה של עץ שהייתה מונחת במקומה בלי הפרעה במשך כ- 1800 שנה. זהו חלק מבית, אולי שהיה שייך לקצין בכיר בצבא הרומי, אשר עלה בלהבות. בשנה שעברה גילו פועלי בניין את האתר ליד הקולוסיאום בעת חפירת פיר למנהרה של קו המטרו החדש של רומא. רק השבוע חשפו הארכיאולוגים את מה שמצאו במהלך החפירה. תגלית זו מעניינת במיוחד משום שהאש שהחריבה את הבית הותירה כמה דברים בשלמותם, כולל קורות עץ שבנסיבות רגילות היו מתפוררות לפני זמן רב. "זה מצב יוצא דופן", אומר המפקח הארכיאולוגי של רומא, פרנצ'סקו פרוספטי. "התמוטטות התקרה אטמה את פנים הבית, השאירה אותו מפוחם ולא שרוף". שריפות ברומא העתיקה היו תכופות.  הבתים הרומיים היו מלאים באלמנטים מעץ ואש שימשה אותם לצורכי תאורה ובישול. זוהי רק האחרונה בסדרת תגליות ארכיאולוגיות בבניית קו C, שהחלה ב -2007. באביב האחרון התגלו צריפים צבאיים בקרבת מקום, וב-2009 הבנייה התעכבה כשהעבודה נכנסה לשרידי האתנאו של הקיסר אדריאנוס, בית ספר עילית שראשיתו במאה השנייה. ...