A new design for Fori Imperiali archeological area

Team masterplan | Giulia Mercuri, Ines Santos | individual project

Masterplan goals: to make the road from Colosseo in Via dei Fori Imperiali to Piazza Venezia pedestrian exclusively and to create a labyrinth of paths that redraw the original forms of the ancient forums, contaminating them with the needs of the contemporary city. My individual project is the new entrance into the forums from Via Cavour. It starts from the history: the overlap between the layers of the historic city and the contemporary city identifies a margin around which I built the new system. A theatrical staircase connects directly the contemporary city to the archeology, the volumes are carved into the stone like sculptural architecture by Mateus, Mies walls guide the historical visit through the new facilities, the Le Corbusier wall redesigns the rhythm of the Foro della Pace colonnade: the margin becomes the instrument of interconnection between ancient and contemporary and identification of the Fori Imperiali history.

The medieval “casina”

The Roman Forum, a porticoed square overlooked by a temple, became the symbol of the emperor’s power in the Imperial age, starting from the Foro di Cesare, then Augusto (2 b.C.), Pace o Vespasiano (71 a.C.), Nerva (97 a.C.), Traiano (112 a.C.).

The historical “border”

The first operation history, through contemporary border: the Nerva, the

Realised by Antonio Munoz in 1934, the “casina” is designed as a draft of stone to be modeled and it’s the new entrance at the urban quota to the Foro di Nerva and Foro di Augusto.

The contemporary and the archeological city operation was the reinterpretation of through the overlap between ancient and contemporary and the identification of a historical the walls of Foro di Augusto and Foro di medieval Torre dei Conti. is the mediation between ancient and contemporary. It’s grafted into the ancient while the directionality of the contemporary be considered as a new public space city.

A stairway contemporary. retaining the and it can for the city.

A new entrance has been designed at the urban level. Its architecture is dedicated to coffee bar and ticket office. It interrupts the driveway and acts as a division between the ancient and the contemporary.

The Torre dei Conti system is shielded by a “Le Corbusier wall” (from the Convent of La Tourette, Lyon, 1960) which follows the Foro della Pace intercolumnio of the colonnade, framing the forums from a new perspective.