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Modern Currents Along the Tiber Forum / AIA Diane Ghirardo Modern Currents The American Institute of Architects Along the Tiber Committee on Design For many tourists, Rome enchants than only tourists. The national gov- with its quaint medieval and Renais- ernment has continued to spread like sance buildings and art, as well as its an octopus in the city center, recently treasures of imperial Roman antiquity, even taking over storage space at Bor- such as the Colosseum and the Pan- romini’s University of S. Ivo and theon. But there is also a modern threatening scholarly research in the Rome, dating to 1870, when the city public archives of pre-1870 Rome. became the capital of the newly uni- fied country. How this new city took The recent transformation of diverse shape raises provocative questions for buildings into museums has been architecture. How can a fundamen- relentless: The former Acquarium tally medieval and Renaissance city be (Ettore Bernich, 1883) is now a gallery transformed into a national capital? for contemporary art; the Montemar- How is it possible to fit new structures tini Museum (Francesco Stefanori, into an ancient city fabric? What is or 1997), the former power plant, is now should be the relationship between the sculpture gallery for the Capito- archaeological artifact and living city? line Museum; the former papal stables How have modern ideas on housing (Scuderie Papali) at the Quirinale are and urbanism provided decent envi- now a museum of modern art (Gae ronments for contemporary residents Aulenti, 2000). In each case, unused —or have they? structures were transformed into public settings for displays of art, A good place to start is with twenty some quite spectacularly. But they years of excavations in a derelict city also left questions about the prolifera- block in the ghetto, which yielded the tion of museums in the historic center ruins of the Crypta Balbi, an enor- unanswered. Is this the only way to mous portico attached to a first cen- save a venerable building? tury A.D. theater. Fragments from architectural and urban transforma- The decades of Fascist control repre- tions over two millenia suddenly came sented a coordinated effort to channel to light. Now reconstructed as a growth in specific directions and to museum, the Crypta Balbi meticu- organize a group of fora which were to lously displays each era, although be of national rather than only urban physical and documentary material significance. They were designed to privileges medieval and ancient times. draw government offices out of the Such an extraordinary slice of urban densely inhabited center. E’42 (Expo- history has no peer elsewhere in sition 1942, or EUR, Universal Expo- Rome, but it also represents one of sition in Rome), located along the many instances of the advancing road to the sea to the south of the city, These forum pages are produced under an agree- museification of historic European was the third and most massive forum ment between Places/Design History Foundation city centers. Government offices, established under Mussolini. Origi- and the American Institute of Architects. This banks and insurance companies have nally planned by Piacentini and con- article reports on the AIA Committee on Design’s extended their tentacles through ever sisting of buildings intended to host a visit to Rome, April 21-26, 2001. The conference greater sections of Rome, but while world exhibition and, subsequently, chair was Carol Rusche Bentel, AIA, and last year’s museums offer one means of preserv- government offices, E’42 instead committee chair was Wendy Evans Joseph, AIA. ing some places for the public, they became museums, convention centers are also problematic because they and a business park for insurance, oil For information about AIA membership and remove yet more buildings from a and airline companies. War canceled upcoming programs, call 800-242-3837 or visit dwindling reserve of housing stock the exhibition, although many build- www.e-architect.com/pia/cod. and shops that serve residents rather ings were completed before 1943 and Places 14.3 73 the fall of the Fascist regime. But the populations of Italian cities, where no semi-public spaces of diverse size and idea of shifting the center of govern- city suffered a greater housing short- character. Although some details did ment to a new zone, with adequate age than Rome. recall rural precedents, the planning office and storage space, wide roads, and design eliminated any hint of adjacent housing and parking, was a The earliest and most significant institutional housing, and residents wise plan unfortunately abandoned housing project in post-war Rome, are enormously proud of their hous- because of anti-Fascist sentiments, the INA-Casa housing estate in the ing complex and maintain it beauti- financial woes and speculative fever Tiburtino quarter (Mario Ridolfi and fully. Criticism of the project was after the war. Ludovico Quaroni, directors, 1950- based on the vernacular elements and 55), exemplified the attempt to pro- the attempt to create a village; most of Indeed, a distinctive feature of Italian duce a Neorealist architecture in the designers subsequently repudiated modernism (Rationalism) was that it harmony with Neorealist cinema and it as a nostalgic aberration, and con- was bound up with Fascism; Mussolini literature. As interpreted in the temporary Roman architects are gen- sponsored many architectural styles, Tiburtino project, this position meant erally dismissive of it. including that of the Rationalists. In opposing the stark modernism of the immediate aftermath of the war, northern Europe as well as the monu- Compare the reaction to this develop- then, architects struggled to identify mentalism and stripped classicism of ment with that to architect Mario a style untainted by Fascism. At the the late 1930s, favoring instead a ver- Fiorentino’s Corviale (1974) on the same time, an interest in emphasizing nacular architecture linked to local city’s western periphery. This one- the social goals of architecture led culture and traditions. Unlike housing kilometer-long, nine-story housing designers to consider ways of design- estates built between the wars, the block sprawls in a long straight block ing housing estates for the growing Tiburtino design attempted to create across the rolling hills of the Agro the sensibility of a village in a locale to Romano, isolated from any other sub- the far eastern periphery of the city. urban developments. The units meant Left: Montemartini Capitoline Museum Apartment blocks of different scales to house shops were occupied by (Francesco Stefanori, 1997) and types (seven- to eight-story, three- people desperate for housing, so the Right: Roman Forum and Monument to Victor to five-story, row houses) spread in services originally planned for the Emmanuel II (Giuseppe Sacconi, 1884-1913) almost random fashion on the site’s complex were never completed; a Photos by Diane Ghirardo gentle hills and created public and single grocery store serves approxi- 74 Places 14.3 Forum / AIA these two housing estates is sharpened by the depressingly monotonous public and private housing projects surrounding Rome. Normally these buildings do not pop onto the radar screen of tourists dazzled by antique, Renaissance and Baroque Rome, and they are certainly no worse than the outskirts of many European cities. But this does not make them any more palatable. How deeply imbricated all of the buildings in twentieth-century Rome were in the political and ideological battles of their own eras is hard to dis- count, but what may surprise is how politically charged most still are today, evident in the polemics over the new complex by Richard Meier to house the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace). Like Renzo Piano’s design for an auditorium complex near the Mus- solini forum, Zaha Hadid’s Center for Contemporary Art in former military barracks and Massimiliano Fuksas’ EUR Conference Center and his headquarters for the Italian Space Agency, Meier’s design for the Ara Pacis demonstrates the determination of Rome’s current government to mately 10,000 inhabitants. Residents admired by the Roman architectural make the city a center of contempo- feel little pride in their housing, community; the idea was a brilliant rary and avant-garde architecture—an noting that there is absolutely no one, many believe, that was not com- effort to give the city modern cachet, sense of community because they pleted as intended. Others are as if its storehouse of treasures were encounter only their immediate appalled at both the idea and the real- insufficient. The response of the neighbors. They demonstrate their ization, even while recognizing fine Roman architectural community has disdain by failing to keep the grounds, architectural details. To dismiss the been decidedly lukewarm, in part stairs and other shared spaces clean Tiburtino project on the grounds of because the commission was awarded and trash-free. By contrast with the “nostalgia” ignores its success among in 1996 without a competition, but Tiburtino project, this building is inhabitants as an alternative to boring also because the new structure dis- modernist blocks, while celebrating a dains the adjacent monumental com- project that residents found dehuman- plex from the late 1930s. Top: INA-Casa housing, Tiburtino quarter izing seems troubling. The disparate (Mario Ridolfi and Ludovico Quaroni, evaluation of these two complexes is Polemics over this project erupt directors, 1950–1955) symptomatic of the malaise of con- repeatedly in Italian newspapers. An Middle: Corviale housing project temporary Roman architecture, in important monument with a much (Mario Fiorentino, 1974) which abstract notions of style and studied set of decorative friezes cele- Bottom: Palazzo dei Congressi, atrium, eur correctness governed judgments. brating the accomplishments of (Adalberto Libera, 1937-1942) The debate that took shape around Augustus Caesar, the Ara Pacis was Places 14.3 75 formerly set in a simple, modernist block (Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo, 1938) as part of a vast urban scheme centered on the ancient mausoleum of Augustus.
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