500 hectares - the project

Brief:

The notion of a 500 ha project derives from Cutrufo’s proposals for a Disney inspired theme park of this size on an undisclosed site on the margins of Rome.  What alternative uses or infrastructure could be proposed for such a large area of the city?  You are free to be as realistic, polemical or visionary as you wish.  You might find inspiration in existing urban elements that we visited, such as Hadrian’s Villa, EUR, or the Vatican; in the competition project for Coney Island; or in the major project that you are currently developing.

The project jumps in size from the very specific individual propositions and detail studies that you have made so far, and concerns city planning at the largest, most broad brush scale. 

Site:

The site that is offered for this project is the outskirts/periphery/margins of Rome as shown on Google Earth.  An alternative basis for a project that would engage in a historical dialogue with the city is the 1816 Plan Topographique de la Campagne de Rome that is available on the shared folder.  If appropriate to your main project, an alternative 500 ha site located elsewhere may be proposed.

Figures:

500 ha = 5 sq km = 5,000,000 sq m

Rome has an average population density of 2,105.5 per sq km.  At this density, 500 ha is sufficient space for 10,527 people.

500 ha = 1,236 acres (UK) = 1.93 sq miles

500 ha = MMMCMLXVIII or 3,968 actus quadrati (Roman acres)

500 ha = the area of central Rome shown in this Google Earth image:

500 ha = one theme park

For a topical comparison, the slums of Mumbai that feature in the film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, and which have been proposed by Prince Charles as a viable model for urban housing, accommodate half a million people in an area of 520 acres (only 210 ha!).

See articles here and here from the Guardian for more information on Mumbai slums.

Timetable:

Introduction – 10.15 am, Wednesday, 11. Feb

Pin-up/review – 1 pm, Thursday, 12. Feb

(roughly 20 hectares per hour)

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.

Incomplete notes on recent mayors

Giulio Carlo Argan (mayor 1976 – 1979)

Argan was the first communist mayor of Rome.  He was an eminent art historian as well as a politician.  Many of his writings deal with architectural topics and it was Argan that proposed the ‘Roma Interrotta’ competition of 1978 to explore imaginative new propositions for the city.  Argan’s books range across the following subjects:

1955 - Pier Luigi Nervi

1957 - Botticelli

1962 - Gropius/Bauhaus

1969 - The Renaissance City

1977 - Henry Moore

1983 - History of Art and the History of the City

1984 - The Baroque

1990 - Michelangelo

 

Francesco Rutelli (mayor 1993 - 2001)

Originally a surrealist artist, Rutelli had an early political background with radical, libertarian leanings.  He became a campaigner for green/environmental policies in the late 80’s.  By the time he became mayor of Rome, he was part of the centre left.  In the national elections of 2001, he unsuccessfully led the ‘Olive Tree’ coalition against Berlusconi.  In 2006, he became  Prodi’s Deputy, serving also as Minister for Welfare and Culture.  Following Prodi’s defeat against Berlesconi in January 2008, he turned his sights back to Rome and stood unsuccessfully for mayor against Alemanno.

 

Walter Veltroni (mayor 2001 - Feb. 2008)

Veltroni, of the centre-left Democratic Party, served two successive terms as mayor.  He has a long involvement in Rome’s politics, having been first elected as a city councillor for the Italian Communist Party in 1976.  His cultural initiatives as mayor included free jazz concerts, free museum openings and the White Nights festival.  He was also one of Barack Obama’s earliest supporters in Europe.  He stepped down as mayor in order to pursue politics at a national level, becoming leader of the Democratic Party.

 

Gianni Alemanno (mayor since April 2008)

Alemanno is a member of the National Alliance/People of Freedom.  He is a controversial right wing politician, connected with neo-fascism and xenophobia, but also a champion of the ‘slow food’ movement.  In addition to a campaign to expel migrants, he has reversed many of Veltroni’s initiatives, including the White Nights.  One of his many controversial cultural pronouncements since becoming mayor has been to propose a referendum to decide whether Richard Meier’s recently completed museum for the Ara Pacis should be demolished.  He has also proposed to ban Hollywood actors from attending the Rome Film Festival.  It is his deputy, Mario Cutrufo, who has announced the EuroDisney inspired theme park.

Someone has been there before...

Thin Cities 4

"The city of Sophronia is made up of two half cities. In one there is the great roller-coaster with its steep humps, the carousel with its chain spokes, the Ferris wheel of spinning cages, the death-ride with crouching motorcyclists, the big top with the clump of trapezes hanging in the middle.  The other half-city is of stone and marble and cement, with the bank, the factories, the palaces, the slaughterhouse, the school, and all the rest.  One of the half-cities is permanent, the other is temporary, and when the period of its sojourn is over, they uproot it, dismantle it, and take it off, transplanting it to the vacant lots of another half-city.

And so every year the day comes when the workmen remove the marble pediments, lower the stone walls, the cement pylons, take down the Ministry, the monument, the docks, the petroleum refinery, the hospital, load them onto trailers, to follow from stand to stand their annual itinerary.  Here remains the half-Sophronia of the shooting-galleries and the carousels, the shout suspended from the cart of the headlong roller-coaster, and it begins to count the months, and days it must wait before the caravan returns and a complete life can begin again."

Italo Calvino (1972) Invisible Cities

Introduction

Studio: Rome – Travel, Authenticity and the Past.

‘If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels.  They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about outside the constraints of work and the struggle for survival.  Yet rarely are they considered to present philosophical problems…’ Alain De Botton

Rome – the Eternal City – could be described as iconic in many ways.  It is one of the cradles of early urban civilisation; the axis mundi of the ancient Roman empire; the court of the Popes; a centre for Christian pilgrimage; an archaeological touchstone for generations of artists and architects; a must-see for contemporary tourists.  It has been repeatedly sacked and laid waste, only to be re-built anew.  Its urban form has been re-invented many times over: by Emperors such as Trajan, Diocletian and Hadrian; by Popes such as Paul III and Sixtus V; and in more recent times by Mussolini.  The result is a densely worked city of many superimposed and often conflicting layers.

Rome may be considered the urban laboratory par excellence.  Travel and tourism of one form or another, have always been inextricably linked to its history.

In August 2008, the current deputy mayor of Rome, Mauro Cutrufo, announced a new initiative for a 500 hectare theme park to be built on the outskirts of the city, which could be completed within three years:

‘…what the Eternal City really needs to keep visitors coming is not museums, but fun rides. "The model is EuroDisney in Paris," said Mauro Cutrufo… If Cutrufo gets his way, anyone bored of touring actual remains of republican and imperial Rome can head to the suburbs to see the same thing in fibreglass. "You would relive scenes from the Colosseum, from ancient Rome, gladiators or maybe Julius Caesar or other things," a Rome city official said…’ Guardian, 15 August 2008.

This proposal is the starting point for Studio One’s investigations this year.  The aim is to explore architecture’s role in the relationship that we create with the past.  We will consider issues of: tourism/travel, heritage, museums, theme parks, pastiche/authenticity, and ‘destination architecture’. The intention is to begin to propose projects and specific architectural interventions that develop an appropriate empathy and respect of the past and yet which can still be contemporary, enjoyable and uplifting. The precise definition of these terms is of course open for you each to determine yourselves.

From an environmental and technological perspective, the studio will consider issues of: the joining of new and old; sustainability and re-use; the autonomy of form; and the environmental lessons that can be learned from traditional indigenous buildings and urban form.