CURATED ARCHITECTURE
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CURATED ARCHITECTURE Is What You See What You Get ?
Jeanne Cayer-Desrosiers McGill University, April 2012 Directed Studio Research
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ABSTRACT
Rome’s Campidoglio is one of the most loaded architectural sites in the world. Its history spans from Rome’s foundation in 753 BC to today, and embodies social, political and religious transformations, manifest through an architecture of authority. The piazza stands as an architectural and cultural palimpsest of Western history upon which an investigation of the adequacy of contemporary media as architectural tool is situated. Inspired by Vico’s Verum Ipsum Factum, this project reveals the layers of physical, cultural
and ideological archaeologies of Rome’s Campidoglio, in order to determine its import into today’s networked urban use. The saying What You See is What You Get, is here transformed into a potent inquiry: Is What You See What You Get (IWYSWYG)? Using a “foreign” Campidoglio as the setting, the project seeks to identify with the construct of a “yet experienced” architectural space exclusively through contemporary media - a sensible, informed, self-conscious and consequential, augmented extension. The intervention thus
aims to reconcile the site’s heavy historical baggage with its current standing through significant contemporary perspectives. Two cinematic works embodying their respective Campidoglio’s, Frederico Fellini’s Fellini’s Roma and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia, were used as the principle sites of enquiry. The remoteness of the site as well as a personal “disembodied” experience allowed to question how one can understand and appropriate a space incarnating such architectural virtue by means of contemporary media, and curate the site from abroad.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To my family, who has been supporting me in every way possible, through half a decade of academic explorations. Merci Momi pour ton grand coeur et ta patience, merci Popi pour ton humour et ta compassion.
Vanessa, Marie and Emily for your presence and all your much needed advice.
To my supervisors, Alberto P茅rez-G贸mez and Andrew King, for their ingenious insight and dedicated patience.
And, to my dear DD. Thank you for all of your dedicated help and support. Thank you to have forced some sanity into irrational times, to have accepted my DRS-self, and to have cooked so many delicious meals and poured much needed G/Ts.
To my friends, who have made me laugh, and cry, when either was necessary. Thank you
To Michael Jemtrud, who believed in this project before I even could.
TABLE OF CONTENT
Preface
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Site Overview Rome’s Campidoglio
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Part One:The Data Historical Exploration Mapped Deductions
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Part Two:The Revelation, Tarkovsky and Fellini Filmic Studies Laminated Insight
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Part Three:The Ascension Proposal 1 The Altered Rise
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Part Four:The Connection The Expansion Final Proposal The Curation
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Notes
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Preface
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Inspired by an analysis of Michelangelo’s Porta Pia, this project started as an investigation of Vico’s saying, Verum Ipsum Factum. Concerned with the modern revolution of architectural representation tools, this project intended to research the evolution of Renaissance’s disegno through contemporary analyses and tools. The initial aim was thus to recreate disegno’s significant depth of translation through digital and computerized tools, such as modeling, editing and rendering software as well as contemporary research methods, as an information source for a disembodied inquiry.
The project further evolved into an enlarged urban setting, taking the entirety of the Capitoline Hill, as opposed to only the Piazza del Campidoglio, as a frame. By considering the layers of physical, cultural and ideological archaeology of Rome’s Campidoglio, the study aimed to question its import in today’s networked urban use. After an in-depth dataized analysis of the site’s historical and architectural evolution through time, another type of approach was needed in order to absorb the significance of the
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Campidoglio today. By questioning how to identify to the construct of an unexperienced architectural space exclusively through contemporary media, in order to propose a sensible, informed, conscious and consequential augmented extension, this project takes a stand on contemporary design techniques and is critically aware of the current stand and responsibilities architects now have to respond to. It also explores what contemporary techniques have to offer as architectural investigation tools as opposed to the pre-modern concept of disegno.
The site, Rome’s Campidoglio, is a critical component in this project as it acts as the element resisting the program. With a history spanning over more than 2,500 years, the Campidoglio is valuable in its example of architectural intentions evolving through time. As Robert Venturi mentioned in his 1953 thesis, “A study of maps and drawings of [the Campidoglio’s] changing settings shows a group of buildings in themselves not significantly altered, but nevertheless revealing variations in expression and quality”.
Site Plan of the Capitoline Hill in Antiquity 1. Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus 2. Temple of Ops Opifera 3. Temple of Fides 4. Ara Gentis Iuliae 5. Unidentified temples from the Severan Marble Plan 6. Tabularium 7. Temple of Veiovis 8. Buildings of the Imperial period 9. Insula of the Ara Coeli 10. Traditional location of the Temple of Juno Moneta 11. Probable remains of the Temple of Juno Moneta and of the Auguraculum
(Robert Venturi, “The Campidoglio : A Case Study”, The Architectural Review (May 1953): 333-334.) Fig.3
Site Overview Rome’s Campidoglio
The Campidoglio is ”where the most things have happened over the longest time, and can give [us] the most solid example of that four-dimensional art form that goes by the name of the Eternal [...] City.” Clark, Eleanor. 1975. Rome and a villa. New York: Pantheon Books.
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The Campidoglio has been through a remarkable number of transformations since its foundation. This constitutes the ideal situation for a program investigating the notion of design evolution. Adjacent to the most historical portion of Rome (the Forum and the Palatine Hill) the Campidoglio once held the eminent position of a victorious army’s arrival point in Roman times while also housing the city’s first temples (of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva). The site later lost its significance as a religious epicenter throughout the Middle Ages. Then used as a pasture land, it still remained the site of the city Senate. In the 1540’s, Pope Paul III commissioned Michelangelo to restore the hill’s religious control over the city in an attempt
to reinstate its sacred authority, Passing away before the completion of the project, Michelangelo’s plans were later resumed by architects such as Giacomo della Porta and Martin Longhi the Elder. Housing the late medieval Palazzo dei Conservatori (council meeting for the patricians) and the Palazzo del Senatorio (seat of the magistrate), as well as the Palazzo Nuovo, a 17th century replica of its facing counterpart, the Campidoglio currently houses the Musei Capitolini as well as the actual city Senate. The site—having constantly morphed into different aesthetics and uses over time—is the ideal location for an intervention aiming to investigate the resistance forced by the site’s architecture authority. Furthermore, the importance of
the Victor Emmanuel Monument (1895-1911), neighbor of the Campidoglio, must not be minimized. Forcing the Capitoline Hill into some kind of a backstage position rather than the prominent central civic, social, and creative space it once was, the Victor Emmanuel Monument is a key component of the site’s elements.The aimed architectural intervention aspires to reposition the Campidoglio as a leading Roman space, rather than a mere secondary tourist attraction. This project will redefine the once crucial Caput Mundi, by enforcing a tense dialogue between harmony a chaos, between respecting the authority of the past yet enforcing a contemporary understanding of a poignant architectural site.
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Rome is the central stage of this investigation. In itself, the city holds a rich accumulation of significant events, artists, politics, religions and architecture. Rome is a place where different times, places and people have met to accomplish great, and devastating, things. Rome is an eternal imaginative fantasy, where dreams are realized, and nightmares accomplished.
rary media as a mean to document architectural interventions. The goal is to allow an experience of the site through the curation of others, hence, to reach an understanding of the place through intellectually constructed works, but to understand then through one’s own ideologies.
Over the millennia, Rome has died, and resurrected, countless times, and will undoubtedly continue to do so. The Italian metropolis is thus the perfect setting to observe the evolution of architectural standing in modern society. By setting up a site remote from Montreal, the location of investigation, this project aims to investigate contempo-
In other words, this project aims to curate my own vision of the Campidoglio.
Part One:The Data Historical Exploration
The first step into this investigation was rather dataesque. This series of drawings focuses on a quite raw approach centered around an historical stratification of information. It aims to reach an understanding of the site’s architectural evo-
lution. With an interactive time line and a series of drawings illustrating the tension between the Imperial and the Renaissance status of the Capitoline Hill, the programs, but most importantly the social and ideological settings, were studied and evaluated.
Capitoline Hill Timeline
Caput Mundi : head of the world Has always functioned as stronghold and fortress in time of distress
13-14th
7th
3rd
192
83
6
2nd
574
9th
1250
Estruscans Iron Age Hut (asylum)
Auguraculum
Temple of Fides
Temple of Veiovis
Fire: Temple of Jupiter and Sybiline books destroyed
Aerarium
Insula
Byzantine Abbey on Arx
Byzantine church taken over by papacy
Romanesque Addition of Gothic 124 steps to Renovation of commemorate church the Black Death
367 Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus
Temple of Concord 343
78
12th
Tabularium
Palazzo Senatorio
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Temple of Juno Moneta
22 Temple of Jupiter Tonans
Augustus adds a hut of Romulus to create new meaning and memories to complement hill’s older tradition
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1348
16th
17th
Palazzo Dei Palazzo Nuovo Conservatori 1797 Palazzo CaffarelliBasilica Clementino deconsecrated (turned into stable)
1993 Museum Space by Carlo Aymonino 1882 Competition for the Arx Vittorio Emmanuel
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Maps allow to capture a city’s qualities which would not necessarily be available from any other types of work. With the first iconographic map of Rome, the 1738 Nolli map, a totally innovative way of depicting the city was created; instead of portraying the city’s architectural construct like all previous maps did, the Nolli map translated how the human body used the urban space. By diagrammatically making explicit the ten-
sion existing between Rome’s private and public spaces, the Nolli map introduced a completely new way of making, using, and interpreting maps. This second angle of enquiry thus focuses on enlarging the study to the broader range of the Campidoglio’s connections and surroundings, as well as to investigate a diversity of interactive tools. The goal is to familiarise one’s remote experience to the specific site.
Part One:The Data Mapped Deductions
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Through a Google Map capture edited with an addition of layered informations, one can understand how the Campidoglio sits right at the center of Rome historical district, along the Tiber River and the Tiber Island. Furthermore, connections to the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Baths of Caracalla, the PIazza Navona, and the Pantheon are made explicit through the urban fabric. A crucial visual and architectural directional relationship is maintained between the Campidoglio and theVatican.
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Interactive maps A virtual experience of Rome is easily accessible through countless interactive panoramas available on the Internet. Positioned at the viewers height, the view of the scene changes as one moves his/her mouse. As much as this type of connection is time related to the user (interactive to the user’ movement) it is not time related to the scene (camera capture from a specific time,frozen in the past).
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Real Time Rome Extending Nolli’s legacy, the project RealTime Rome, developed by MIT SENSEable City Lab as a contribution to the 2006 Venice Biennale, introduces the parameter of time into Rome’s map. By overlaying people’s mobility through cell phone data and onto a geographic ref-
erence, one is able to understand the dynamics of the way human interact with and within the city. The addition of the time dimension morphes the definition of a map into a revolutionary new tool.
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Photosynth The public application allows anyone to access the virtual experience of almost anything possible. It creates a 360° experience by matching aligned points on pictures. Once completed, the panorama can be viewed in a ‘point cloud’ form.This model, made of all
of the intersecting points, aligned in the series of pictures used to create it, interacts at the user’s demands.The point cloud model can be exported in a multitude of modelling software for further editing and explorations. curated architecture -17-
Through the mapping of the movement, the depth of field, and the voids of a cinematic scene’s extracted frames, one can start to deconstruct an image. Dissociating the frame from a movie removes the time parameter which constructs the particular of the moving picture media. However, by repositioning the frame into its context and by linking the chosen information through the camera’s movement, time reappears. This methodology allows the viewer, the third triangular
component in relationship with the site (in Rome) and the film, to be involved within a larger discourse. This allows for the analyses of the image’s progression from a point of view outside of the camera’s. The work is thus reinterpreted by making explicit the relationship between the image’s composition and the Campidoglio. The analysis of cinema inquires architectural clues: it forces to view the site in a new angle. The very structure of film making initiates the viewer to understand the space and other
Part Two:The Revelation Tarkovsky and Fellini Filmic Studies
“...the cinematic apparatus implies not only the passage of time,a chronology into which we would slip as if into a perpetual present, but also a complex, stratified time in which we move through different levels simultaneously, present, past(s), future(s) -and not only because we use our memory and expectations, but also because, when it emphasizes the time in which things take place, their duration, cinema almost allows us to perceive time” Aumont, J. 1997.The image. London: British Film Institute
After completing the The Data first part, which focused on an initial historical survey of the Campidoglio’s evolution through time and tools, another angle of enquiry was necessary in order to connect the experience of the site with one’s remote location. This cinematic inquiry allowed for a deeper and more layered understanding of the Campidoglio’s import as a contemporary frame for magic to be created. Fellini and Tarkovsky’s curation of the Campidoglio quickly became central to the evolution of the project, and remained an essential tool until its very end.
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qualities such as light, depth, mass, shadows, and more. Those qualities, all shared with architecture, were here explored through both Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia and Fellini’s Roma. Rome is known for its paradoxical relationship with time, and for this reason the study of the site through films represents an opportunity to reconstruct the atmosphere of the Campidoglio through the eyes of two masters of cinema.
Fellini’s Rome The final scene of Fellini’s Roma ... The scene here studied is the movie’s very end sequence. The camera follows a group of motorcycle circling around Rome’s historic district and key spaces. From fountains, to roundabouts to the Piazza di Spagna, and finally
to the Campidoglio. The camera’s point of view alternates between an outside gaze onto the bicker crew, to an inward vision from the driver’s seat. Arriving at the bottom of the famous Cordonata, the camera cuts, only to continue
from the elevated plaza. The view revolves around the Marus Aurelius statues various times, gazing at the three palaces, and continues its journey towards the Colosseum and the nearby highway from which the movie ends.
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Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia What ancestor speak in me? I can’t live simultaneously in my head and in my body. That’s why I can’t be just one person. I can feel myself countless things at once. There are not great masters left, that’s the real evil of our time. Our heart’s path is covered in shadow. We must listen to the voices that seem useless. Into brains full of long sewage pipes, of school walls, tarmac and welfare papers, the buzzing of insects must enter. We must all fill our eyes and ears with things that are the beginning of great dreams. Someone must shout that we’ll built the pyramids. It doesn’t matter if we don’t. We must fuel that wish. We must stretch the corners of our soul like an endless sheet. If
you want the world to go forward, we must hold hands. We must mix the so-called healthy with the so-called sick. You healthy ones! What does your health mean? The eyes of mankind are looking at the pit into which we are all plunging. Freedom is useless if you don’t have the courage to look us in the eyes, to eat, drink and sleep with us! It’s the so-called healthy who have brought the world to the verge of ruin. Listen, Man! In you, water, fire, and then ashes. And the bones in the ashes.The bones and the ashes! Where am I when I am not in the real world or in my imagination? Here’s my new pact with the world: It must be sunny at night and snowy in August. Great things end,
small things endure. Society must become one again instead of being fragmented. Just look at nature and you’ll see that life is simple, that we must go back to where we were, to the point where you took the wrong turning.We must go back to the main foundation of life, without dirtying the water. What kind of world is this if a mad man has to tell you to be ashamed of yourself? Music now. I forgot this. O Mother! The air is that light thing that moves around your head and becomes clearer when you laugh. -The music doesn’t work! Help me! Domenico’s monologue Tarkovskii, Andrei Arsenevich, Tonino Guerra, Francesco Casati, Oleg IAnkovskii, Erland Josephson, and Domiziana Giordano. 2002. Nostalghia. London: Artificial Eye.
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“The uncanny’s secret of “what ought to have remained hidden” is of course precisely what we opened the novel to read or came to the cinema to see, set in motion by the chiastic flip that re-temporalizes space in three steps: a gap created by desire; partial objects of desire that resist meaning and symbolization; and a re-formulation of the infra-thin gap between demand and desire.” Kunze, Donald.“The Topography of Fear:Architecture’s Fourth Walls and Inside Frames.” The Pennsylvania State University
Fellini’s Roma is a visual archive of the director’s experience as a modern man in modern Rome. It depicts the existential and psychological fantasies introduced by the modern state. In response to Fellini’s extreme feeling of alienation triggered by the industrialized metropolis, the movie was a crucial approach to investigate in relation to one’s remote location of architectural studies. Through this film, Fellini
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develops a new ontology of the modern man’s experience in the city and thus provides a fragmented yet deep and loaded understanding of contemporary Rome.
Fellini’s Roma is the story of Rome, through the lenses of the Italian director’s own subjective memories and experiences; it is not the story of Rome, it is the story of Fellini’s Rome.
Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia was the perfect counter act to Fellini’s Roma, as it deals with similar themes, but seen through the perspective of an outsider (or, a nonroman). Tarkovsky said that: “Nostalghia is about the impossibility of people living together without really knowing one another, and about the problems arising from the necessity of getting to know one another.Then there is an aspect of the film which is less evident on the surface, concerning the impossibility of importing or exporting culture, of appropriating another people’s culture.”
The scene studied is the second to last one, where the character of the ‘mad man’, Domenico, immolates himself on the Campidoglio Piazza, after having given a passionate speech on the situation of today’s world, to an uncaring audience. The scene judges the widespread culture of excess existing today, and thus explores the spiritual malaise of modern society.
At a RAI press conference in Rome Tony Mitchell, Nosthalgia.com,“Tarkovsky in Italy.” http://people.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Tarkovsky_in_Italy.html (accessed March 29, 2012)
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The previous study focuses on a geometrically driven analysis of the cinematic experience of two significant movies curating the site of the Campidoglio. While recognizing the success of such inquiry to allow one to grasp a totally new perspective of the site, a lack of emotional and experiential heritage emanating from the site triggered another approach to the two movies. The following two images are the
result of this second cinematic analysis. Still based on a model of mapping, the exercise aims to frame and emphasis the initial emotional response one gets of the the two scenes. The goal is to access the cinematic experience’s emotional qualities in an attempt to reveal something that was not necessary seen either through the movies themselves, or through the initial study. In Nostalghia, it is Dominico immolating himself amongst a cruel
Part Two:The Revelation Tarkovsky and Fellini Laminated Insight
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and uncaring audience, in Fellini’s Roma, it is the darkness and instability of the nightly square. By abstracting the scene through a laminated sequence, the image’s emotional baggage is carried through, without even understanding what one is actually seeing. The two explorative montages thus come from a reconstruction of the two scene’s atmospheric ambiance, without defining any geometric references.
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While the previous two cinematic investigations allows a potent analysis of the Campidoglio through the lenses of two contemporary masterminds, the following chapter is characterized by the development of a personal curation. Acting as a contemporary director of one’s own setting, the proposed scheme searches to engage and complete the current Campidoglio. After analyzing the cinematic studies as one complete entity, the areas of the site that were actually not curated by either of the two films were ad-
dressed. Called the dead angles, these volumetric portions became the design drivers; they became what would be embodied through an architectural intervention. It was thus from those five dead angles that was articulated this first proposal, which aims to allow an experience of the site from an unprecedented perspective: the underground. Faithful to a long lived Roman tradition of archaeological excavation, calculated extrusions were design to framed dictated views and allow an unprecedented architectural extension.
This is where the inception of the architectural construct started to appear; cones of vision initiated an underground perspective, leading to an exploration of curated excavation which now dictates the entirety of the project’s design. The project is thus not a renovation, nor a contemporary adaptation of a Baroque environment. The consequence of the intervention is to submit the site to a contemporary event through which visitors can experience the space. Because of the site’s authority, the only available room for an intervention is undoubtedly, the underground.
Part Three:The Ascension Proposal I: The Altered Rise
Nostalghia’s dead angles
Fellini’s Roma dead angles
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The permanent portion of the project consists of a precise excavation of the plaza’s underground history. Dictated by the cinematic experiences of Fellini’s Roma (1972) and Tarkosvky’s Nostalghia (1983), the underground journey frames specific views appropriated to the movies’ scenes’ dead angle. The excavation allows unprecedented perspectives of the site while preserving an architectural discourse with the two cinematographic pieces.
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The ephemeral portions of the proposal consists of an above ground extrusion of the subterranean paths, leading to a space into which meaningful Roman events can be held.
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Festival Internazional del Film di Roma October 27th - November 4th, 2012 The International Rome Film Festival is held annually during the last week of October. Dispersed in many venues such as the MAXXI, the Esla Morante Cultural Center, the Casa del Cinema and the Parco della Musica, the week long festival features the best cinematographic pieces of the year, and also curates many exhibitions, workshops, conferences and out of competition screenings.
The Marc’ Aurelio Awards for Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress and Grand Jury Prize are determined by an international jury of seven influential personalities. The Campidoglio’s installation houses public screenings of the award winning movies, documentaries, and short films.
Natale di Roma, April 21st, 2013 Rome’s birth is celebrated every year on the Campidoglio. Torches, lit palazzos and fireworks illuminate the plaza for the night of April 21st. Furthermore, on the Sunday preceding the celebration, a parade starting from the Circus Massimo, and passing through the Colosseum, culminates on the Campidoglio, where long burning candles are lit to announce the upcoming festivities.
The installation houses this celebration of light in an intimate yet grandiose manner. The tensile steel roof is designed to support various lighting installations. The space also constitutes a privileged position to watch the celebratory fireworks.
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While the precedent version of the project is restricted to the area right below the plaza, the following chapter intends to broaden the scale of intervention, by extending the architectural movement from the centered plaza to the entirety of the surrounding Capitoline Hill. An exploration of the relationship between the underground space, into which the architectural intervention
was allowed to exist, and the built above ground space (consisted of the many palaces and other Italian villas on the Hill), allowed to determine this extension. The plaza was thus connected to the surrounding city and meaningful moments, creating a dialogue between this contemporary extension and a variety of previous others. Entrances were designed at the feet of the Vittoriano , in the Forum Romanum, at the bot-
tom of the famous Cordonata, and towards the Teatro Marcello. Links were made between important Roman sites in order to force the viewer into new perspectives, to add frames onto a juxtaposition of historical layers. Instead of curating the piazza, the entire Capitoline Hill is now addressed, defining its boundary but also linking it to a much disconnected, yet rich and meaningful surrounding.
Part Four:The Connection The Expansion
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VIA DEI FORI IMPERIALI
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VIA DEL THEATRO MARCELLO
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VITTORIO EMANUELE II
CORDONATA
FORO ROMANO TEATRO MARCELLO
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After extending the intervention outside the inward plaza itself and onto the entire Capitoline Hill territory, the last and final chapter is dedicated to the curation of excavating movements sustained by the site. A refinement in architectural language and tectonics, as well as a precision of goals and directives all came together to create this final proposition. With the project’s extension and the creation of the four axis linking opposite sides on the hill, the area situated right below the famous oval pavement became the privileged
space where the four distinct experiences meet. The space under the piazza is shaped by the forces of each path, individually entering the powerful oval in its own way. They collide in this subterranean space only to allow the observation space to take shape. The entire articulation of surprising entrances, underground tunnels, and discovery connections links the once solitary and dismantled Capitoline Hill to its surroundings. The cinematographic dead angles, determined by the initial study of both Nostalghia
Part Four:The Connection The Curation
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and Fellini’s Roma, are framed by five oculi, which protrude through the piazza’s astrological pavement, to come meet the underground space. A connection between the existing Galleria Lapideria (excavation completed in the 1980’s to create an underground link between the Palazzo Conservatori and the Palazzo Nuovo) was also designed to allow visitor an access to the plaza and to the museums. Distinct elevations and descents were designed for each oculus, in an attempt to accentuate the privileged positions of the five individual experiences.
The central experiential space is thus articulated to allow specific views onto the plaza. The linking paths themselves also support a number of architectural intrusions, namely in the Palazzo Conservatori and the Palazzo Nuovo, in the Tabularium and outside to the Piazza Caffarelli. Linking the Vittoriano, to the Via del Teatro Marcello, the Forum Romanum and the Cordonata, a meaningful relationship between the underground curation and the built site above is allowed by this internalized perspective.
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The study of movement, depth of field’s evolution and voids (as oppose to architectural constructs) in both Nostalghia and Fellini’s Roma determined the areas which would be emphasized through the intervention. As illustrated in the following page, the underground excavation below the plaza was dictated by the direction and aperture of the dead angles discovered through the study. The idea is to create a contemporary curation of a historic and universal site, through the understanding of various critical influences. This way, the Campidoglio is individually experienced by each visitor, through a common yet broader cultural setting, reinforcing the relationship between the site’s previous, present, and future authority, standing, and embodied powerful message.
Fig.15
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piazza oculus frame
cinematographic dead angles
piazza
ceiling
Galleria Lapidaria (Capitolini Museum)
built oculus frame
tubed network
stepped mound (oculus direction)
pedestrian network connection
Capitoline Hill
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Each moment of discovery under one of the five oculus features a different perspective onto a deeper understanding of the space above; through changes in height, angles, and framed views, the ex-
perience of understanding the present, through a past architecture and a contemporary addition is made possible. They all blend into each other by the volumetric forces of the underground tunnels.
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The experience of the tunnels, as well as of the dispersed entrances, focuses on the directional force towards the central space, as well as on the disturbance of the existing architectural fabric. By de-familiarizing the visitor from an entry point A to an exit point B, through a monochrome and dark non space, the few above ground intrusions dispersed along the four axis are made explicit.
Through the tunnels’ articulation, one can experience moments of localization with the precisely located intrusions. The intervention perforates, yet respects the authority of the existing structures above ground. The links between the architecture and the tunnel is emphasized by the beams of natural and artificial lights which infill the spaces through the excavated intrusions.
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Notes Figure 1. alainlm, flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/alainlm/3308783682/sizes/l/in/photostream/ (accessed April 7, 2012) Picture taken February 25th, 2009. Figure 2. Buonarroti, Michelangelo. Porta Pia; Study of the Archway, 1550s. Rome, Italy. http://library.artstor.org/library/secure/ViewImages?id=4iFCeTg4NCciJy8laCt2KngqVXkgdlZ6fA%3D%3D&userId=gjNEdT E%3D&zoomparams= (accessed April 4, 2012) Figure 3. Coarelli, Filippo. 2007. Rome and environs: an archaeological guide. Berkeley: University of California Press. Figure 4. “Augustus’s Rome.” http://www.the-romans.co.uk/imperial_rome.htm (accessed September 27, 2012) View of the Capitoline Hill in Antiquity, from the Forum Romanum, where 10. Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus 9. Temple of Juno Moneta 8. Temple of Fides 1-7. Forum Romanum Figure 5. “Russian Paintings.” http://www.russianpaintings.net/russian_paintings.vphp?author=734 (accessed October 3, 2012) Figure 6. Musei In Comune. “Musei Capitolini.” http://en.museicapitolini.org/servizi/tour_virtuale (accessed April 2, 2012) screen shot of the interactive map at http://tourvirtuale.museicapitolini.org/#en (accessed April 2, 2012) Figure 7. Real Time Rome. “Sketches.” http://senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome/sketches/index.html (accessed April 7, 2012) Image3 Flow: Where is traffic moving? “This software visualizes the movement of mobile phone callers traveling in vehicles. It focuses on the area around the Stazione Termini and the Grande Raccordo Anulare (Rome’s ring road). Red indicates areas where traffic is moving slowly, green shows areas where vehicles are moving quickly, and the arrows represent the dominant direction of travel.” Figure 8. Real Time Rome. “Sketches.” http://senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome/sketches/index.html (accessed April 7, 2012) Image6 Gatherings: What does Rome look like during special events? “How do people occupy and move through certain areas of the city during special events? This software shows the prerecorded movements of mobile phone users during important events in Rome: Madonna’s concert in Rome on August 6, 2006”
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Figure 9. Cayer-Desrosiers, Jeanne. http://photosynth.net/ Figure 10. Ibid Figure 11. Screen captures Fellini, Federico, Bernardino Zapponi, Turi Vasile, Peter Gonzales, Fiona Florence, Anna Magnani, Gore Vidal, and Nino Rota. 2001. Roma. Santa Monica, CA: MGM Home Entertainment. Figure 12. Screen Captures Tarkovskii, Andrei Arsenevich, Tonino Guerra, Francesco Casati, Oleg IAnkovskii, Erland Josephson, and Domiziana Giordano. 2002. Nostalghia. London: Artificial Eye. Figure 13. Artnet. “Gordon Matta Clark’s Conical Intersect (detail)” http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/FEATURES/smyth/Images/ smyth6-4-4.jpg (accessed March 2, 2012) Figure 14. Photomontage from Marcel Germain, flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcelgermain/3878787184/ (accessed March 20, 2012) Picture taken August 1st, 2009. Figure 15 (and following montages). Photomontage from Marco Santoro, Panoramio, http://www.panoramio.com/photo_explorer#view=photo&position=7&with_photo_id=58278080&order=date_ desc&user=93014 (accessed April 2, 2012) Figure 16. Photomontage from Piero Ruggiero, flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/12031978@N04/2552410690/ (accessed April 9, 2012) Picture taken May 28th, 2005.
Jeanne Cayer-Desrosiers 2011-2012
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