Thursday, September 25, 2008

The Model City itinerary

1 – Palazzo dei Congressi site, (Massimiliano Fuksas, under construction)
2 – Museo Pigorini, (Brusa, G. Cancellotti, E. Montuori, A. Scalpelli) 1938-43
3 – Museo della Civiltà Romana, (Aschieri, Bernardini, Pascoletti, Presutti) 1938-52
4 – Palazzo dei Congressi, (Libera) 1937-52
5 – Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, (Guerrini, La Padula, Romano) 1938-43
6 – Post Office (Banfi, Belgioioso, Peressutti, Rogers), 1939-1940
7 – Palazzo dello sport (Nervi, Piacentini) 1956-60
8 – Nuova Centralità “Torraccio” (masterplan Purini, under construction)
9 – Laurentino 38 (Barucci), 1975-79

This photo was taken from a terrace of the Palazzo dei Congressi where performances can take place with the city as the background. I saw the idea of the city as the theatrical landscape (backdrop) to be very interesting. The city is the place where new scenes (new public interventions, new architecture, future urban plans of development) are enacted, tested, and played out. The suspense of testing interventions within the urban fabric never ends because the result of how a project will be utilized can never fully be predetermined only strongly suggested.


-Andreka
Above: Our profs in comparison to the Palazzo Della Civilita Italiana - looks smaller than it is. The grandeur of the EUR was impressive. At the end of our walk, I returned to italian class a bit dazed, and my teacher asked what I had thought. When I told her I was a bit captivated by the drama of the place (or blurted out that I liked it, in weak italian), she told me scornfully how she had lived in the EUR and how terrible it had been (she shuddered). Perhaps she lived towards the Laurentino side of things. Perhaps the scale of the EUR, as a whole, could be overwhelming to the average resident - it certainly wasnt designed with that perspective in mind, as in Garbatella. However for the tourist, museum goer, dermatoligist, etc. the immense axiallity, consistensy and symmetrey of the place serve as quite the imperial backdrop for daily activities.
-Travis


I thought that the Laurentino housing development was an excellent counterpoint to the EUR. We see in both the incredible power of design—the ability for architecture to shape and respond to the lives of inhabitants. Each project addresses prevailing urban issues such as density, public space, and circulation, but they do so in different ways. The implementation of these designs and their success/failure in a modern context provides an invaluable precedent for new architects who often tackle the same problems.


Many in our group felt that the EUR was a success (perhaps others could elaborate?). When we stood on the road looking at the bridges of Laurentino, however, everyone understood that the concept there had failed. Somehow the research, planning, and design of Barucci came to a relatively fruitless end. Before using 20/20 hindsight to explain the failure, I think it is valuable to identify why it may have been a success. The project strives to create communities; it makes green space accessible; it promotes local commerce; and it prioritizes pedestrian traffic while accommodating the car.


By all measures this is a success! It would be showered with praise by design critics at Cornell. But, then again, what are our value-scales at Cornell, what are they throughout architecture academia at large? Do they correspond to reality? How much can projects ever be resolved in the design process, or must they always be tested under worldly pressures… in the largest laboratory available?


-Tim



The Square Colosseum in its current state of renovation epitomizes the difference between theoretical intention and actual use within less successful portions of the EUR. There is quite literally a dialog between the bold, monumental inscription at the top of the structure, and the graffiti scrawled across a concrete barrier that denies any entrance to the inhabited space at the foot of the structure.


-Benn



With the juxtaposition of the commercial bridge in Venice (Ponte di Rialto) and the bridge housing project in Rome (Laurentino housing development) I was wondering what makes “good” or “bad” bad design, and how much the designer can actually control. As context change, a bridge with retail that used to be for the common person living in Venice now becomes a tourist trap and a hotspot of activity. While in the bridges social hosing, the pools of isolated development could not support store activity, and the hazard of these spaces overtook their ultimate need.


-Sheryl

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Laurentino was sketched out in the 70s as a futuristic urban utopia. Today it's a highway to nowhere, and the pedestrian bridges have been taken over by squatters. This description as to why it has failed in function makes total sense:

The site plan makes a convincing diagram, however, there seems to be little organizational connection with the existing community. Entrance past the paired slabs is a passage through a parking area and, once reached, the plaza lacks activity, definition, and the facilities needed to make it truly a central community space. The idea of the extended stepped slabs with parking to one side and a landscaped open space to the other, also makes a good diagram but this space is too big, poorly defined and, as a result, is underused. These spaces are unkempt and are not well equipped or maintained. […] The absence of a viable shopping environment results in the reality of closed shop fronts, graffiti, a generally trashed, unkempt ambience, and loss of viable pedestrian activity. It may be that the adaptations that were made to the original legge 167 housing standards, changes made to reach a more realistic correspondence between building cost and affordable financing have resulted in a loss of the amenities that no community can be without. A reoccurring pattern in many of these developments is the building of incomplete communities where public facilities are late in coming or are never funded at all for sites, that at least when they are first built, are physically and spiritually detached from an existing infrastructure of shopping, schools, and transportation.

Other incomplete communities could include Testaccio in its beginning stages, or one of Aldo Rossi’s first projects, Gallaratese (1969-1974), a housing complex on the outskirts of Milan...also likened to a beached whale…


mia+ariane

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

In context: Pippo Ciorra: Ludovico Quaroni and the Roman School


For our first lecture of the semester, guest speaker Pippo Ciorra delivers a beautiful talk regarding the work of architect Ludovico Quaroni and his influence on post-war Italian architecture. Among the topics discussed were:

The Italian struggle between modernism and classicism. An issue of language and identity.

Building as city, city as building. The flexibility of scale in design.

Bigness, or the idea that one architectural gesture can affect or change a landscape.

Monumentality as the ultimate architectural desire.

Looking forward to more talks!
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"THERE IS A VERY SMALL DISTANCE BETWEEN ARCHITECTURE AND POLITICS."

twiggy. miniskirt. archigram. kubrick. zola. superstudio. 

...all interested in the mechanism of future, but still humanist!

after all, the supercity is a machine, not a dream....


-mia+ariane

Monday, September 15, 2008

11th Venice Architecture Biennale


venice biennale 2008 from mia ovcina on Vimeo.

Biennale Architecture Out There: Architecture Beyond Building
by Aaron Betsky

"The 11th Architecture Biennale, entitled Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, points out what should be an obvious fact: architecture is not building. Buildings are objects and the act of building leads to such objects, but architecture is something else. It is the way we think and talk about buildings, how we represent them, how we build them. This is architecture. More generally, architecture is a way of representing, shaping and perhaps even offering critical alternatives to the human-made environment. In this world it is not enough to keep the rain out, create room for office cubicles, or fit into a context that either changes continually or becomes artificially frozen."

http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/

ROMA interrotta

1978 to 2008: “Thirty years later the Biennale di Venezia reopens the game, expanding the horizon from the urban to the metropolitan: the creative itinerary rediscovers imagination.”



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images: Costantino Dardi

“In order to discover new scenarios by which we might be able to be at home in the sprawl of what was once the city and is now a confused urban field, we must uncover and rethink the past out of which it seemingly inexorably arose...

How can we live with the landscapes time and economic forces have given us? First of all by seeing and knowing them, and that means being able to mirror and map them in those forms and compositions proper to architecture. Roma Interotta showed how that could be done. Now we must continue the work.”

~Aaron Betsky

mia+ariane

Friday, September 5, 2008

The Green City itinerary


1 – Piazza Venezia / Via del Mare, Urban renovation 1885-1911 / 1926-32
2 – Circo Massimo, Fascist Temporary Exhibitions 1937-1939
3 – Passeggiata Archeologica, Archeological Park 1908-1914
4 – Caracalla Baths, Proposal for the Rebuilding of the Baths (Aldo Rossi) 1978
5 – Garbatella District, 1920-1934 (G. Giovannoni, M. Piacentini, I. Sabbatini and others)
6 – Mercati Generali at Via Ostiense, (food market), 1913-1924 (E. Saffi) Redevelopment with commerical-leisure-cultural facilities (2000-10 (OMA/Rem Koolhaas)
7 – Post Office at via Marmorata,1933-1935 (Adalberto Libera, Mario De Renzi)
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garbatella: GARDEN CITY
[7:59:32 PM] mia ovcina says: the green city itinerary introduced a couple of main themes for the class...
[8:00:17 PM] ariane.pm says: so, the themes seem to be
1) how existing projects that are kept intact to idolize a certain time period have to be integrated into a new landscape and
2) the city within the city...
[8:03:36 PM] mia ovcina says: with a dash of propaganda, italian political agendas, and libera
[8:10:33 PM] ariane.pm says: yes. maybe we can address rome as disneyland to begin with
[8:13:53 PM] mia ovcina says: disneyROMA! but aside from tourists, and the obvious attractions, there IS a bit more history/context here...
[8:14:07 PM] ariane.pm says: for example, mussolini planting the pine trees at largo argentina because he thought they were reminiscent of ancient columns and wanted to produce an [artificially] picturesque landscape. since he arbitrarily froze all the layers of rome and pulled out the classical layer as THE one to idolize and reference.
[8:14:38 PM] ariane.pm says: or all the fake paving going on around the forum
[8:14:53 PM] ariane.pm says: and the separation of the forum from the city in the first place!
[8:16:05 PM] ariane.pm says: roma: adventure park.
[8:16:19 PM] mia ovcina says: fine. but there's more...
[8:16:39 PM] mia ovcina says: some of the ruins have been succesfully repurposed.
[8:17:42 PM] ariane.pm says: those old pieces of rubble, waiting for the new idea of the city....
[8:18:22 PM] mia ovcina says: shut up. For example, Circo Massimo/Passeggiata Archeologica... they have modern uses...
[8:19:11 PM] ariane.pm says: yes. a prime example of site value!!
[8:21:04 PM] ariane.pm says: and circo massimo is still being used as a center for spectacle. just as in the good ol' days...
[8:21:23 PM] mia ovcina says: precisely!
[8:26:10 PM] mia ovcina says: ...back to the city, there's also the theme of modern developments (mostly in the periphery) and the various approaches/ideologies as to how rome should expand...
[8:42:07 PM] ariane.pm says: with Garbatella?
[8:58:39 PM] mia ovcina says: yeah. Garbatella...
[9:33:27 PM] ariane.pm says: well. a lot people were forced to leave the city center when it was destroyed...like when Mussolini elimated that neighborhood (Alessandrino) for the construction of the Via dei Fori Imperiali, or before that when the Altare della Patria was inaugurated...
[9:35:11 PM] ariane.pm says: and they were relocated to a new neighborhood, outside the city walls, and were obliged to reinvent a language for themselves.
[9:38:06 PM] mia ovcina says: ironic that the invented language of many of these developments is one that attempts to emulate the city, the place the residents were expelled from, instead of creating something new... something better...
[9:39:42 PM] ariane.pm says: well, they did try to create something better--the garden city--actually an ancient concept in the end...but they had to have a new identity for themselves since they were so detached from and not really part of rome anymore.
[9:42:42 PM] ariane.pm says: so they built their own little square and little houses with shared gardens...it was the fascists that ruined it!! the first movement in 1920 was smaller, more traditional, then in 1934 that idea was done away with and the monumentalization began...silly barochetto...
(ugly fascist barochetto building)
[9:43:26 PM] mia ovcina says: it's true, but how much of it was built by 'them' vs. imposed on them by the state? i'm not convinced...
[9:43:42 PM] ariane.pm says: who is them?
[9:43:52 PM] mia ovcina says: them being the people...
[9:44:00 PM] mia ovcina says: the expelled ones
[9:44:26 PM] mia ovcina says: and now they get koolhaas and starchitecture, do they really need it?
[9:46:03 PM] ariane.pm says: ugh. when i say they, i mean gustavo giovanoni, architectural theorist and founder of the architecture school of rome, who was the 1920 planner. he wanted something nice for them. the people were actors in his play. they dealt with his stage props. but they did ok, they built a community feeling.
[9:46:31 PM] ariane.pm says: koolhaas is just trying to make his city of youth...
[9:47:10 PM] ariane.pm says: a connection between the industrial center of garbatella and universita roma tre
[9:47:09 PM] mia ovcina says: "the people were actors in his play." that's what i'm saying. it's not real...
[9:47:37 PM] ariane.pm says: what is your point? live something long enough, make it a reality.
[9:48:12 PM] ariane.pm says: ok we are done here.
[9:48:16 PM] mia ovcina says: fine
[9:48:19 PM] ariane.pm says: it worked is all.
[9:48:42 PM] mia ovcina says: but did it really?
[9:48:27 PM] ariane.pm says: people want to live there now.
[9:48:35 PM] ariane.pm says: gabriele wants to live there.
[9:48:57 PM] mia ovcina says: it's a constructed lie.
[9:49:05 PM] ariane.pm says: the end.