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…

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