A plan...

Imagine producing an architectural plan measuring 18 metres wide by 13 metres high (the equivalent of 470 A1 sheets).

Imagine drawing it at a scale of 1:240, so that it can represent a city area of 4.3 kilometres by 3.1 kilometres (1,350 ha), yet be detailed enough to show all the internal walls of every building.

Imagine it drawn, not on paper, but painstakingly inscribed by hand onto 150 slabs of the finest marble, to form a durable architectural survey weighing some 80-100 tonnes.

An ambitious undertaking?  A folly?  A fiction perhaps?

Such a plan was actually undertaken 1,800 years ago in Rome, during the reign of Severus.  It was mounted on an interior wall in the Templum Pacis (Temple of Peace) adjacent to the Imperial Forum.  Today, the plan is known as the Forma Urbis Romae, or the Severan Marble Plan.

This unique and remarkable object soon became neglected and eventually desecrated as the ancient Roman city fell, with the valuable marble slabs being reused for other building projects and even being burnt to make lime.  What survived in-situ was quickly lost, becoming buried with other rubble at the foot of the wall.

It remained lost until 1562, when fragments were first excavated, arousing great excitement among antiquarians.  This excitement was short lived however, and many of these pieces were again lost when they were reused a few years after during the construction of a garden for the Farnese family.  Scholarly interest in the plan was only revived some 80 years later, when a project was undertaken to reassemble the existant fragments by  Pietro Forrier, the curator of the Capitoline Museum, and his assistant Giovanni Battista Nolli (just six years before producing his own plan of the city).

Since this time further fragments have come to light sporadically in many different locations.  Sometimes single pieces are unearthed, occasionally larger quantities have been found, including a cache of 451 of those that had been used in the Farnese project.  The most recent piece was discovered during the construction of an underground passage in 2001.

Today, there are a total of 1,186 known fragments that have been recovered, representing about 10-15% of the original plan.  They are inaccessible to the public, except for very occasional temporary exhibitions of a few selected fragments, and are stored in crates at the Museum of Roman Civilisation at EUR.  A digital project currently being undertaken by Stanford University aims to comprehensively record all of the fragments and to make the plan widely accessible for the first time.

Projects

Three projects are proposed in the first few weeks of the studio:

1. Piazza Interrotta (micro-Nolli, or 'Nolli to go')

This project focuses on the historic centre of the city.  It takes the Nolli plan, that was the starting point for the Roma Interrotta project, and cuts it up into smaller, 'piazza sized' pieces.  Each person in the studio will be randomly assigned a different fragment and make studies of that specific place and then propose a specific intervention within it.  The first part of this project will be undertaken while we are in Rome.  It will be further developed on our return to Sheffield.

2. Diary of details

This is an on-going observation dairy, in sketch book (or possibly blog) format.  The intention is to explore detailing and design through the study of a specific Italian/Roman theme.  Potential topics could include any of the following, but you are free to pick any subject that interests you.

- coffee machines

- scooters

- cafe/bar counters/fittings

- street furniture

- fountains

- market stalls/canopies

- insertions into ruins

- film posters/hoardings

3. A new Rome in a week (100ha per day)

This short, broad brush project focuses on large-scale interventions on the periphery of Rome.  Drawing on the diverse range of large urban elements that already exist on the edge of the city, this project will explore alternative ideas for new urban interventions at a similar scale (500ha) to the recently proposed theme park.

Big things on the edge

A provisional list (to be elaborated):

- The Vatican, 44 ha, population ~800, 1377

- Villa Adriana, 80+ ha, 117AD

- Cinecitta', 40 ha, 1937

- EUR, ? ha, 1938

- Ostia, ? ha, population  50-75,000, 3rd century BC to 2nd century AD

- Bagni di Tivoli

The intention is to visit a number of these during our visit.  They offer diverse precedents for the 'New Rome in a week' project.

Roma Interrotta

"It is easier to design the cities of the future than those of the past.  Rome is an interrupted city because it has stopped being imagined and begun to be (poorly) planned.  In Rome the issue is more about time than about space.  The tides of centuries have passed and left behind on the sand the relics of remote shipwrecks; and, like all relics they are surrounded by an immediate and boundless space, the sea and the beach.  It is a city that was initially inhabited by remains, then by ruins, and today, by rubbish...

...fortunately Rome has never been afraid of a shambles.  It is a city of Providence, and Providence patches up shambles.  The beauty of Rome exists in its being a messed-up city patched up a countless number of times.  Could we pretend that Providence was followed by utopia, a mother and daughter detesting each other? Utopia has never set foot in Rome, much less so than in Las Vegas."

Guilio Carlo Argan (1978)

The original 'Roma Interrotta' competition was held in 1978 and was a key event in the development of post-modernism and Italian rationalism.  Twelve international architects were each given one section of Nolli's map and asked to re-imagine Rome.  The presumption was that time had been suspended since the drawing of the map and that history had been interrotta (interrupted).  The architects were:

I Piero Sartogo

II Constantino Dardi

III Antoine Grumbach

IV James Stirling

V Paulo Portoghesi

VI Romaldo Giurgola

VII Venturi and Rauch

VIII  Colin Rowe

IX Michael Graves

X Rob Krier

XI Aldo Rossi

XII Leon Krier

The schemes varied widely in attitude, from the plausible urban collage of Colin Rowe, to the pop kitsch of Venturi and the despair of Leon Krier.  The competition and all twelve entries are examined in detail in Architectural Design, Profile 20, No.3-4 1979, which was guest edited by Michael Graves.

Thirty years on, the 1978 exhibition has been revived and is currently showing as part of the Venice Biennale, alongside a new exhibition which also explores the urban plan of Rome.  Curated by Aaron Betsky, 'Uneternal City' asks twelve new architects to re-imagine the city of Rome, focusing on peripheral areas, rather than the 'eternal' centre.  The architects are:

1. BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), Copenhagen

2. Centrola and  Associates, Rome

3. Clark Stevens, California

4. Delogu Associati, Rome

5. Giametta and Giametta, Rome

6. Koning and Eizenberg, California

7. Labics, Rome

8. MAD, Beijing/Tokyo

9. n!studio, Rome

10. Nemesi, Rome

11. t-studio, Rome

12. West 8, Rotterdam