DEPT. OF ARCHITECTURE ROMAN RENOVATION Can Richard Meier undo what Augustus and Mussolini wrought?

BY JOHN SEABROOK

ecent events at St.Peter’s Square,in early masterpiece of Roman art which RRome, have demonstrated, among was dedicated by Augustus in 9 B.C. If other things, the virtues of a piazza. you line it up right, you can fit two thou- Three million people entered Rome in sand years of architectural history and the course of about five days, and almost three great eras of Roman builders (the all of them came to the piazza outside the emperors, the Popes, and the Fascists) in basilica.Bernini,the piazza’s main archi- a single snapshot. tect,conceived the square (which is actu- However, while the individual struc- ally oval) in the seventeenth century as a tures are interesting, they don’t work site of pilgrimage,although he might not together. There’s something wrong with have imagined what could happen when the over-all scale of the square. A piazza Christian zeal is combined with mass can be intimate,like Piazza Mattei,in the tourism. Nevertheless, apart from a few Ghetto, which is just big enough to hold minor incidents, everyone in the square its delightful turtle fountain, or it can behaved. For the people waiting outside be expansive, like Piazza Venezia, where it, in a line to view Pope John Paul II’s Mussolini staged his big rallies. But body which stretched for more than three whether it serves as the site of an im- miles, the arms of Bernini’s great flank- promptu soccer game,a political demon- ing colonnades were ahead, like a big stration, or a pilgrimage, a piazza must stone hug ready to enfold pilgrims and always function as a stage for acting sightseers alike at the end of their ordeal. out scenes from the drama of everyday The line snaked across the Vittorio life. On this level, Piazza Augusto fails Emanuele II bridge, upriver along the completely. It is a dente cariato, a rotten eastern bank of the Tiber, and almost as tooth—an abscess in Rome’s idea of its far as another square,Piazza Augusto Im- own perfection. peratore. If St. Peter’s Square is a model for all the good things a piazza can be, he story of Piazza Augusto Impera- Piazza Augusto is an example of all Ttore is a tale of how the city that in- the things that can go wrong. Instead of vented civic architecture stopped creating the generously open space of St. Peter’s, it, except at its edges, where ugly post- there’s a large pile of earth and rock war housing developments have spoiled blocking the middle of this piazza, which the once famous campagna romana.It be- houses the tomb of Augustus, Rome’s gins more than two thousand years ago, first emperor. Its ancient stones are cov- in the early days of the Roman Empire, ered with a ragged crown of cypress trees. with the construction of the mausoleum The base of this uncharacteristically of Augustus, and it runs through Mus- neglected-looking ruin has been exca- solini and his massive new architectural vated down to Year Zero, the street level program for Rome with the piazza at two millennia ago, which was eighteen its heart. Now it involves contemporary feet lower than the urban surface today; Roman politics,the celebrated American the area around the base now serves architect Richard Meier, and a fervid ar- mainly as a toilet for dogs.Above this pit, gument over the place of modern build- on two sides of the piazza are Fascist- ings in Rome. style façades of buildings constructed In 1993, Rome elected as its mayor under Mussolini.On a third side are two Francesco Rutelli,a thirty-nine-year-old Baroque churches, attached to another star of the left, and, like many previous thirties building,and on the fourth side is Roman leaders, he came to power with the monumental sculptural frieze known an itch to build.Rutelli’s height,piercing as the Ara Pacis, or Altar of Peace, an green eyes,and American-style commu-

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TNY—05/02/05—PAGE 56—133SC nication skills earned him the nickname azza Augusto. Rutelli wanted the build- ernism. According to Le Corbusier, a Clintonino, or Little Clinton. He had ing ready for the Year 2000 celebrations,a building should take no account of its set- a number of plans to rejuvenate the major event in Rome, and he proposed ting and context—the architect should Eternal City. “I think cities are like lan- that it would be partially funded by cor- be concerned only with the formal proper- guages,” Rutelli told me. “If a language porate sponsors, in this case a consor- ties of the structure itself.Meier favored an doesn’t change, grow, and evolve, it dies. tium of three banks that had supported industrial aesthetic that was rigorously It is the same with cities—a city must be other cultural activities in Rome.A time- minimalist,rejecting all ornamental flour- transformed from time to time.” consuming competition could be avoided; ishes except for those which can be One obvious means of effecting that in fact,there would be no public review at achieved with white paint,glass,and light.

For many Romans, the reaction to Meier’s design for a museum on the Piazza Augusto was simply “Non fatelo”—don’t build it.

transformation is to commission a dra- all. As Rutelli put it, “It was perhaps a Some of Meier’s contemporaries, notably matic new building. All the other major risk, but we wanted to avoid dragging Michael Graves, later moved away from European cities have done this, from the process out with too long a debate.” these tenets, but Meier has remained Daniel Libeskind’s star-shaped Jewish steadfastly Corbusian. Only the scale has Museum, in Berlin, to Richard Rog- ichard Meier was thrilled with Ru- changed,as he has progressed from houses ers’s Millennium Dome,in London,and Rtelli’s offer. “It’s every architect’s to museums and government buildings. Richard Meier’s Museum of Contem- dream to build in the center of Rome, Despite the modernity of Meier’s style, porary Art, in Barcelona. Even if people partly because it hasn’t been done for so his buildings are deeply conservative. detest the building (the Dome,for exam- long,” he told me. Naturally, Meier also In 1973, Meier spent a year at the ple, was vilified by many Londoners), liked Rutelli’s scheme for avoiding a com- American Academy in Rome, which they talk about it, and the debate gives petition.“It was an unusual situation,” he is situated at the top of the Janiculum the city a youthful energy that the Colos- said. “Normally, in projects of this kind, Hill, the highest point in central Rome. seum and the Pantheon can’t provide all you go through a long jury process to se- “Rome taught me how to treat large in- by themselves. lect an architect.This was direct—and to terior spaces in an intimate way,”he said. Shortly after Rutelli was elected, he me it seems like the best way.” “The way the light comes in, the way was invited by the mayor of Barcelona, Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1934, you experience the space, move through Pasqual Maragall, to see Richard Meier’s Meier studied architecture at Cornell and the space—that sense of promenade. museum there, and he was enchanted by made his name by designing residences, You don’t try to duplicate that, but you it. The following year, he met Meier, in most notably the 1967 Smith House, hope you learn from it. It’s what every Davos, Switzerland, at the World Eco- in Darien, Connecticut, on Long Island architect comes to Rome for, to learn nomic Summit; both were participating Sound.Early in his career,Meier and four that.” One of Meier’s favorite buildings

H in a seminar on the future of cities.After- other architects, calling themselves the in Rome is Sant’ Ivo alla Sapienza, Bor- T O R

ward, they spoke about the possibility of New York Five, proclaimed their alle- romini’s church off Corso del Rinasci- D L

O Meier’s designing a new museum to house giance to the ideas of Le Corbusier and mento, which is designed like a six- N R

A the Ara Pacis, on the west side of Pi- the Northern European tradition of mod- pointed star. “You can go to Sant’ Ivo

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TNY—05/02/05—PAGE 57—133SC —live opi art—r 13848 when there are two people, and you can from three years of campaigning in Gaul When Augustus died, in 14 A.D., an go there when there are a hundred peo- and Spain, where he had been putting ossuary containing his ashes was placed in ple, and it still feels intimate.” down rebellions and creating the adminis- a niche within the mausoleum;it remained trative bureaucracy for the new empire.In there until it disappeared, probably dur- ugustus was a sober, culturally con- form,the Ara resembles the kind of stone ing one of the barbarian sacks of Rome Aservative Roman;it’s typical that one structures that earlier generations of Ro- in the fifth century. Over the ensuing of his first great buildings was his tomb.At mans had built as places for offering sac- centuries,the tomb’s marble was stripped the time Augustus built his mausoleum,it rifices to the gods, except that it is much off and employed for other buildings, was among the largest structures in early larger, and the carved friezes are among and the mausoleum was used for a variety imperial Rome—an enormous round base the great masterpieces of ancient sculp- of purposes—as a bear-baiting venue, of brick clad in gleaming white marble, ture.The four-sided outer-precinct walls as a bullfighting arena, and, from 1908, on top of which sat a towering mound of are twenty-eight feet high, with marble as the site of Rome’s main concert hall, earth that was planted with evergreens steps leading up to the entrance. Inside, which was built on top of the tomb. and cypresses,in the style of the Etruscan there is a carved marble altar. The sculp- In the twentieth century, the piazza tombs. Work on it began soon after Au- tures on the southern precinct wall depict became the centerpiece of Benito Mus- gustus defeated Anthony and Cleopatra a religious procession,in which Augustus solini’s plans for Rome. Just before the in the battle of Actium, in 31 B.C. As it and members of his family are shown Fascist Party took power, in 1922, Mus- turned out,Augustus didn’t need his tomb practicing rites which were part of Rome’s solini said,“Rome is our point of depar- for forty-two more years,and during that republican past but had by then been ture,our reference point.It is our symbol, time he created many other monuments: laid aside. Augustus was trying to make or, if you will, our myth.” He wanted temples,aqueducts,colonnades,theatres, the radical autocracy of the new empire Italians to see him as a second Augustus, roads, and bridges. These were not only acceptable to the Romans by combining and to see the Fascist empire, which he buildings for the religious and political élite it with old-fashioned values—keeping proclaimed after conquering Ethiopia but also great architecture for the masses. up appearances,respecting mos maiorum in 1936, as the new Roman Empire. He The Ara Pacis was commissioned in (the way the ancestors did things), and used both new buildings and ancient 13 B.C., to celebrate Augustus’ return honoring the greatness of Rome. ruins to make his case. “We must liber-

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TNY—05/02/05—PAGE 58—133SC.—GLASGOW—PLEASE CENTER RULE BETWEEN TEXT ABOVE AND AD BELOW—IF AD IS OVERSIZED, PLEASE DROP AD DOWN TO FOLIO ate all of ancient Rome from mediocre and that continue to draw tourists from for buildings that were only two stories disfigurements,” he said. “Rome cannot, all over the world today. high, a scale that worked better with the must not simply be a modern city in the Mussolini scooped Piazza Augusto other elements in the piazza. However, banal sense of the word.” out of the dense urban tissue of Rome. by the time the buildings were erected Near the Colosseum, Mussolini de- He demolished all the buildings within a they had succumbed to the Fascist molished a whole neighborhood,razed a thousand-square-yard area around the tendency to grandiosity, and swelled to hill,and cut a wide,straight modern road mausoleum of Augustus, leaving only four stories. between the Roman Forum and the Im- the two Baroque churches standing. When the design for these buildings perial Forums, the Via dei Fori Imperi- Two new buildings were added, to form was finished, Mussolini added the ideo- ali, so that crowds who gathered in Pi- the north and east sides of the piazza, logical key to the whole piazza—the Ara azza Venezia to hear him thunder from each fronted by porticoes of squat, mas- Pacis. He had it moved from its site, near his balcony about Italy’s future could do sive columns that recall Mussolini’s pug- Via del Corso, where it was buried be- so within thrilling sight of Italy’s glori- nacious physiognomy. As with other neath a sixteenth-century palazzo, and ous past. Christopher Woodward, in his Fascist works in Rome, the design was ordered it placed between the mausoleum 2001 book,“In Ruins,”observes that the carried out by a committee of the lead- and the river. Just as Augustus used remains of ancient Rome can have two ing Italian rationalist architects of the Rome’s republican heritage to lend a sense opposing meanings—they can stand for day, closely supervised by Il Duce him- of continuity to the imperial regime, the greatness of Rome,or for the passing self.Rome’s ancient architectural vernac- which in fact represented the end of that of that greatness, and these interpreta- ular—domes, vaults, cylinders, prisms— heritage, so would Mussolini use Rome’s tions have served Fascist and Christian was reinterpreted within the rationalists’ Augustan past to make the Fascist state ideologies, respectively. Mussolini took interest in geometrical abstraction, re- seem inevitable—patrimony as destiny. the decayed ruins that inspired artists sulting in buildings that were, at their Morpurgo designed a simple, shell- and poets of the eighteenth and nine- best,modernist and classical at the same like building to house the Ara Pacis— teenth centuries and turned them into time.The design of Piazza Augusto,ex- a mostly glass, cement, and travertine the monumental ruins that delighted ecuted by a Jewish architect named Vit- structure—with a flight of travertine Hitler, when he visited Rome in 1938, torio Ballio Morpurgo, originally called steps leading up to it. However, by 1938

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TNY—05/02/05—PAGE 59—133SC.—GLASGOW—PLEASE CENTER RULE BETWEEN TEXT ABOVE AND AD BELOW—IF AD IS OVERSIZED, PLEASE DROP AD DOWN TO FOLIO Hitler had forced the passage of the anti- the environment—everything about it has its battles between preservationists Semitic Racial Laws,and Morpurgo was is huge.The columns are so massive that and developers, but in Rome the situa- not permitted to remain in charge of the the colonnades read like all solids and tion is greatly complicated by the fact building.It was erected by a committee of no voids. It’s out of scale with the rest of that there are so many different Romes engineers who loosely followed his design. Rome,which has this very human scale.” to preserve—classical Rome, medieval Some archeologists think that Mus- In July,1996,Meier made an elaborate Rome, Renaissance Rome, Baroque solini planned to use Augustus’ mau- presentation to city officials.His proposal Rome, eighteenth-century Rome, post- soleum as his own tomb.But when Mus- looked a good deal like his museum in unification-of-Italy Rome, and Fascist solini was shot,by partisans,on April 28, Barcelona. It featured a series of loggia- Rome. Each successive Rome is built on 1945, his body was not interred in Pi- like structures organized around one top of (and in many cases out of) previ- azza Augusto; instead, it was hung up- wall—a single vertical plane that begins ous Romes—more than two thousand side down outside a gas station in Milan, as an eight-foot wall at one end of the site years of history is squashed into dozens then buried in an unmarked grave, from and grows into the façade of the building. of feet of dense rubble. (You can see which it was stolen by a Fascist loyal- The Ara Pacis would be inside the mid- these striations of civilization at the edges ist, and then, after spending some time dle loggia, surrounded by walls made of of some of the excavations around the hidden in a monk’s cell in a charterhouse massive glass panels, each one weighing city, and they look almost geological, so outside Milan,it was eventually reinterred twelve hundred pounds. There was also thoroughly have the building materials in Mussolini’s home town of Predappio, room for a library,a bookstore,a café,and and artifacts been compacted.) This is in Emilia-Romagna, where the grave an auditorium capable of seating about Roma che Sparisce, or Vanishing Rome, has become a popular tourist attraction. a hundred and fifty people. Above the the underground city that impinges on The piazza lost its status as prophecy auditorium was a large round skylight, the surface city in countless ways, the and became, instead, a monumentally which looks like a reference to the oculus Rome that Freud was thinking of when failed boast. in the roof of the nearby Pantheon. It’s he famously used the city as a metaphor not, Meier told me; he doesn’t make his- for the human unconscious in “Civiliza- eier worked on the drawings for torical references in his work. “It’s a sky- tion and Its Discontents.” Mthe Ara Pacis project for eighteen light,for letting light into the room.”The The office of superintendent dates months, designing the building with total budget for the project was around from the Renaissance, when Rome was John Eisler, a senior architect at Rich- twenty million dollars,a relatively modest still a Papal state and the Church claimed ard Meier & Partners Architects in New sum, in part because Meier agreed to a control over all the ancient buildings and York. He designs by hand, sketching fee that was consistent with the Ital- works of art in the city. Pope Leo X’s with a 2B drafting pencil and giving ian pay scale for architects, which is well superintendent was the painter Raphael. finished drawings to his staff for digi- below what he is paid for his buildings in In the fifteen-tens,Raphael was “prefect tal rendering. Meier wanted something the United States and elsewhere. of all marble and stone”within ten miles “light, transparent, and inviting,” and of the Vatican. Bernini was a super- also “optimistic,” a word he often uses efore construction began, the build- intendent for Pope Urban VIII, in the to characterize his own work and archi- Bing had to be approved by the city’s sixteen-thirties and forties. He removed tecture in general. “I thought about the superintendent of cultural heritage and the bronze beams that decorated the ceil- imposition Mussolini had made here,” by two national superintendents, for ar- ing of the Pantheon’s pronaos, melted he said. “It’s an imposition of a will on cheology and for architecture. Every city them down, and turned them into his overwrought baldacchino, which towers over the high altar in St. Peter’s Basilica. Italy became a nation in 1861. Rome was annexed in 1870,and the Church was forced to surrender oversight of Rome’s cultural heritage to the state. While ulti- mate control over the vast array of arche- ological and historical sites lies with the national authorities, their administration was confusingly divided between the state and the comune, or city government. The state claimed the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill; the city took the Imperial Forums. The national superintendent of archeological heritage got control over buildings and artifacts that date from be- fore 476, the official end of the western Roman Empire; the national superin- “Look, you’re never going to make any progress in therapy if tendent of architectural heritage claimed you keep blaming other people for your problems.” buildings and artifacts created after 476;

TNY—05/02/05—PAGE 60—133SC —live opi art a10414 and the city’s superintendent of cultural It was the only time during our interview the press called “il bello contro il ricco,” heritage became responsible for the city’s that I saw him smile. the handsome guy against the rich guy, museums and works of art, as well as When I asked whether he thought he wasn’t a contest at all—the rich guy won public gardens and fountains. had been too aggressive in protecting overwhelmingly. Another man of the Since Mussolini’s death,these superin- Rome’s archeological past, citing the fre- left, Walter Veltroni, became mayor of tendents have treated the centro storico as if quently heard complaint that Rome has Rome. He let it be known that he was it were finished.With so much restoration become a museum of the once great city it in favor of Meier’s building, but he did and excavation to be done, it didn’t make was, La Regina disagreed. “As proof, you not have the same personal involvement sense to waste resources on new build- only have to look at all the tourists who in the project that Rutelli had had, and ings. By the nineteen-eighties, this atti- come to Rome to see that past,” he said. did not make its completion a priority. tude dominated Roman city planning. The problem, he went on, is With the Berlusconi gov- “Archeologists have the attitude that there with politicians like Rutelli. ernment in power,the antago- is nothing you can build in the center of Politicians need new roads and nists of the Meier project found Rome that could possibly be as interest- construction projects,because a friend in Vittorio Sgarbi, ing as what’s already there, either on the such projects employ poten- the new under-secretary to the ground or under the ground,” Francesco tial voters and spread money Minister of Culture. Sgarbi is Garofalo,an architect in Rome,told me. around. “It is our duty to say a conservative art critic who “They would rather leave a lot empty, in no, when there is a danger to became a national figure in the the hope of one day excavating it, than archeological monuments,but nineteen-eighties as a frequent allow anything to be built. It’s insane.” it becomes very difficult when guest on a popular television Many of Francesco Rutelli’s attempts you deal with politicians. Be- show that was a cross between to modernize Rome were frustrated by cause while tourists bring a lot of money Charlie Rose and Jerry Springer. It fea- the superintendent of archeological her- to the city, they don’t vote—so there tured Sgarbi’s erudite discussions of mat- itage, Adriano La Regina. In 1997, for will almost always be a conflict there.” ters of culture combined with outrageous example,La Regina stopped Rutelli from In the late nineteen-nineties, after personal attacks on other guests; Sgarbi building a traffic tunnel under Castel giving his initial consent to Meier’s delighted audiences by living up to the Sant’ Angelo, near the river. The tunnel building, La Regina took core samples meaning of his name—“sgarbato”means would have solved one of the biggest traf- around the site and found some limited “uncivil.” On at least one occasion he fic problems in central Rome—the moat evidence of ancient structures. The su- came to blows with his fellow guests on of automobiles that rings the castle and perintendent took more than two years national television. In the nineties, he cuts it off from the surrounding neigh- to study these findings. In 2000, he fi- had his own show, “Sgarbi Quotidiani,” borhood of Prati.But La Regina said no nally gave his approval for work to pro- or “Daily Sgarbi,” a monologue on cur- to the tunnel,because he felt that he had ceed, although he reserved the right to rent events and culture. not been given sufficient assurances that do further excavations after the Mor- Sgarbi managed to present Meier’s the stability of the building would be purgo building came down. In 2001, he building as an example of Italy’s careless preserved by the engineers. again stopped work, in order to exca- attitude toward its heritage. An ambi- During his twenty-eight years as ar- vate on the south and north sides of the tious leftist politician and an arrogant cheological superintendent,which ended site.The contractor,Fabrizio Di Amato, world-famous architect were advancing in January, La Regina was probably the demanded that the city pay for the cost their own agendas, without public re- most influential city planner in Rome, of equipment and workers who were view.“In America,you could never allow although his influence can be measured now idle. Meanwhile, the superintend- the mayor of New York and Richard mainly in absences—buildings not built, ent of cultural heritage for the city of Meier to build around the Statue of Lib- roads removed,acreage excavated.When Rome, Dr. Eugenio La Rocca, had de- erty, let’s say, without at least a public re- I visited him in his office, in the Roman termined that the Ara Pacis was too view,”Sgarbi told me,when I went to the Forum,the greatest excavation site in the fragile to move;the Meier museum would apartment where he was residing, which world,he looked ready for his approach- have to be built around it. The monu- once belonged to Pope Innocent X and ing retirement. He seemed worn out by ment was packed up in protective ply- overlooks the Piazza Navona. “Only in long years of defending Vanishing Rome wood and scaffolding tubes. It wasn’t Italy do we allow this.” from the forces of modernity.Raising his until 2001, a year after the new museum Sgarbi also had a number of un- glasses and peering closely at a map of was supposed to have been finished,that civil things to say about the appearance the Roman Forum and the Imperial Fo- Morpurgo’s building was demolished. of Meier’s building, describing it as rums from 1981, he pointed with pride “disgusting,” and calling attention to to the parks in the Imperial Forums that y this time, Rutelli was no longer how incongruous the blindingly white, he had turned into excavations and to Bmayor. He had decided to forgo the industrial-looking building would seem another spot, just below the Capitoline last months of his second term, in order among Rome’s peachy neoclassical fa- Hill, where a modern road used to run. to lead the center-left coalition against çades. “It looks more like a gas station “You know in the film ‘Roman Holiday,’ the center-right’s leader, Silvio Berlus- in Dallas than a museum in Rome,” he when Gregory Peck takes the road on coni, in Italy’s 2001 general election for said. And Meier, after all, was not solv- his scooter?”he asked. “We removed it.” prime minister. But the contest, which ing any of the central problems of the

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TNY—05/02/05—PAGE 61—133SC —Live spot—R14073 E—Please report and inspect on quality it completely denies the sense of place.” Terence Riley, the chief curator of ar- chitecture and design for the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, argues that Meier was a good choice for Rome. “Of all the well-known contemporary archi- tects,Meier is probably the most classical, in the sense of proportion,and in his sym- pathy with urban fabric,”he said.“Roman architecture has been exported to virtu- ally every corner of the globe—the neo- classical style is the vernacular for almost all important civic,ecclesiastical,or com- mercial buildings from Shanghai to New York—and to erect barriers that pre- vent the flow of style from moving the other way seems capricious.” He added, “I think the attempt to create a kind of • • urban taxidermy in Rome is unnatural.” By the beginning of 2003,it appeared dente cariato; he was merely applying a ances on a poured-concrete raft.) “So that as if the project might remain entangled glossy white modernist cap. in the future,” La Rocca went on,“if any- in bureaucratic spaghetti forever. The But with the old Morpurgo build- one does want to go down and reopen the contractor, Di Amato, was still losing ing already gone, and the scaffolding for Port of Ripetta, they will be able to.” money, and was threatening to make the the Meier building under construction, superintendents pay.Meier was busy with Sgarbi’s options for stopping the project hanks, in part, to Sgarbi’s efforts, by other buildings, among them the Jubilee were limited.According to Meier,Sgarbi T2002 the Meier building had become Church on the outskirts of Rome (though came to see him and begged him to an international symbol of the shortcom- Meier’s church was commissioned after change some part of the project,so that he ings of modernism.Meier may have seen his museum, the Vatican had proved to could save face in Italy,but Meier refused. his building as a humanist antidote to the be a considerably more pliable client Sgarbi then demanded that the city exca- totalitarian architecture in the piazza,but than the comune, and the church was vate for an eighteenth-century piece of to its critics the building represented a dif- nearing completion); the museum for Roma che Sparisce, the Port of Ripetta, ferent kind of Fascism—the globalization the Burda Collection, in Baden-Baden; which was once situated under the south- of the International Style, which has lit- and condominiums on Perry Street, in western end of the site. The port was a tered the great capitals of Europe with its Manhattan’s West Village.Romans were kind of amphibious piazza that featured cold boxes.Marc Breitman,a well-known frescoing the construction walls around graceful travertine steps leading down French architect, feared that the Meier the Ara Pacis site with graffiti. into the water;the steps were designed by building could be “a Pandora’s box” for a Meanwhile, a meeting had been ar- the architect responsible for the Spanish modernist takeover of the historic center ranged for all three superintendents and Steps,Alessandro Specchi.The travertine of Rome,raising the alarming prospect of some outside experts to discuss the future had almost certainly been removed when Gehry-style blobs following Meier’s white of the piazza. Meier’s project manager, the forty-foot walls along the Tiber were boxes.Léon Krier,of Luxembourg,com- Nigel Ryan, and the contractor attended built, in the eighteen-seventies, and, in mented, “The municipality’s decision to the meeting as unofficial observers. La any case,the Lungotevere,the city’s main rebuild the enclosure around the Ara Pacis Regina also invited Leonardo Benevolo, north-south traffic artery, was now on in a modernist style, which is willfully the author of “The History of the City” top of it. Nevertheless, Superintendent anti-classical, is an act of provocation of and one of the most influential postwar La Rocca eventually agreed to under- extreme gravity.” In 2002, Samir Younés, Italian urbanisti; in his 1977 book “Roma take additional excavations.The negoti- the director of the Rome Studies pro- Oggi,” Benevolo, a radical conservative, ations delayed construction another year. gram at the University of Notre Dame’s advocated destroying most post-1870 These excavations, La Rocca told me architecture school, published a book of buildings in the centro storico and replacing when I went to see him at his office,in Pi- counterproposals for the site, which also them with parks.The meeting took place azza Lovatelli,in the Ghetto,“determined contained many of the arguments against in the executive construction trailer on the that there was hardly anything left of the building.Younés told me,“A building site,around a large table.A scale model of the port down below.”But,just in case,the should take account of the sense of place. the Ara Pacis museum, made by local ar- superintendents had already asked Meier What I object to about the Meier building chitecture students, was in the center of to eliminate part of the aesthetically cru- is that it is a type of industrial architecture the table.Someone had placed miniature cial wall,and to change the foundations of that could be in Barcelona—indeed, it human figures inside the model,to give it the building so as not to impinge on any looks a good deal like the Meier build- a sense of scale; oddly, the figures were possible remains. (The building now bal- ing in Barcelona—or Atlanta or Athens; dressed in eighteenth-century clothing.

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TNY—05/02/05—PAGE 62—133SC —live opi art a10453—#2 page—cartoon change only Stephen Natanson,a filmmaker who has the night before from Moscow, where he made a documentary about Meier’s Ara had been meeting with a potential client, Pacis project for Italian television, re- and he was flying back to New York that corded the proceedings on film. afternoon.Climbing construction ladders Shortly after the meeting began, the in the terrible heat was probably not at the superintendent of architectural heritage, top of his list of things to do in Rome. Roberto Di Paola, said that he wasn’t He couldn’t squeeze his broad shoulders satisfied with the Port of Ripetta excava- through the openings at the top of each tions, and suggested that the whole pi- ladder without twisting sideways. After azza be dug down to Year Zero.Benevolo the first ladder, he removed his double- enthusiastically endorsed Di Paola’s no- breasted gray suit jacket. By the time he tion,and recommended tearing down the reached the third ladder his white shirt Fascist buildings, too; he had brought was splotched with sweat and his black along sketches showing the piazza with- wingtips were pale with construction dust. out them.La Regina seemed reluctant to “You’ve got to be in shape to be an ar- back Di Paola in continuing the dig, in chitect,” he said, pausing to catch his part because Di Paola had always refused breath. to allow La Regina to excavate some gar- Emerging finally on the roof, Meier dens under his authority in the Imperial looked at the mausoleum and the sur- Forums. The contractor then said that if rounding square, with its two thousand the comune really wished to stop the proj- years of building. Overgrown and un- ect and dig a big hole, the comune was kempt,Augustus’tomb looked more like going to have to reimburse him for all the a symbol of Rome’s transience than of money he would lose. This diminished its lasting greatness.“Rome reminds me Di Paola’s enthusiasm for the monumen- of a man who lives by exhibiting to trav- tal pit, and the meeting broke up shortly ellers his grandmother’s corpse,” James afterward with an informal agreement to Joyce remarked,in a letter to his brother, allow the work to proceed. Two months and one gets this feeling looking at Au- later, the new foundation was poured. gustus’ tomb. It represents the futility of architecture to stave off the inevitable ne hot morning last summer,Rich- ruination of all things. Oard Meier came to Piazza Augusto As for the piazza, it is no closer to Imperatore. He toured the construction being a functional public space than it was site with Superintendent La Rocca.Con- before Meier’s building began going up. struction was far from finished: only the When he first got the commission,Meier steel frame and concrete floors were in wanted it to include the whole piazza,but place.Without the interiors,the structure he no longer felt that way.He wasn’t sure looked like a big-box store.The two men what to do about the piazza,although he walked amid the scaffolding and piles thought the solution might have to be of rebar,in the heat and dust,trailed by a radical.“Maybe you just cut it all down to crowd of builders, suppliers, designers, street level and start again,” he told me. and journalists. Meier endured the at- La Rocca moved toward the shade tention with an air of noblesse oblige,but below; already the ladders were hot to La Rocca became irritated by the scene. the touch. But the architect, bareheaded When one paparazzo elbowed him aside in the sun, continued to stare out at the to get a picture of il maestro inspecting a forlorn piazza. Finally, Meier started sample “Fire Exit” sign, La Rocca cried, down the ladders, his legs trembling “Non è possibile!” slightly on the rungs. La Rocca was eager to see the view of At the bottom, the client and the ar- the piazza from the roof of the museum; chitect went over to look at the Ara Pacis. he had not been up there before.But get- It was still boxed up, with the building ting to the roof required climbing three going up all around it, poised between and a half flights of construction ladders being a wreck, a ruin, and the rebirth and squeezing through the narrow open- of Rome.Four massive poured-concrete ings at the top of each one. Meier is sev- columns framed the plywood box. enty and favors his right side when he La Rocca seemed overjoyed with the walks. His snow-white, Yeatsian-length prospect.“It is as it was,”he said in a sol- hair gives him the saintly mien of an artist emn whisper. in his master years.He had flown to Rome “It will be,” Meier agreed. ♦

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