Our final Rome Walk began today at the Villa Borghese, which is one of the oldest remaining villas in Rome, and sits at the end of a pretty fantastic public green space. We met here and talked for a while, some of the interesting facts were how the building was designed in order to show the family’s art collection, not to live in, that the private green space was built to do the same thing for exotic plants, and that the reason for Rome’s many green spaces that are woven seamlessly into the city fabric is that after Italy’s unification, all of the massive estates were turned into public areas! After we talked we finally went in the building, where we were met with a great deal of pretty fantastic stuff (to put it eloquently). The entry space was fantastic and filled to the brim with statues, wall paintings, and an extremely detailed mosaic floor. From here we were on our own to explore the exhibit, so we walked around both floors before heading outside. Some of my favorite features of the 1st floor gallery: a great statue made out of both black and white marble, a room where the walls were painted with architectural objects (trying to break the box again?), the series of Bernini statues including David, and an amazing circular staircase that had an elevator retrofitted in the center. The second floor was a little less interesting as far as the gallery, but the design of the spaces was pretty cool; as you ventured away from the stairs, the rooms transformed from a series of small little galleries filled with paintings (including a Raphael) into very large spaces for various works. This evolution helped pull you along, and emphasized how the building was designed for exhibition instead of living.
After finishing the second floor, we ventured outside into the garden. It was pretty nice, and the statues that lined the edge were cool as well. My favorite part was how the center axis running away from the building led from the very organized garden and into the very natural park space behind. It is a gradient type effect: from structure, to structured landscape, to landscape…pretty fun! After finishing here, we left for our next stop: Renzo Piano’s Parco della Musica. Along the way we saw the National Museum of Modern Art, which had a pretty great façade, the British Academy where OMA will be lecturing soon (A REALLY BIG DEAL!), and we walked through a newer residential neighborhood filled with pretty interesting duplex-style houses. We then stopped at a “masterpiece” of Italian modern architecture, which was pretty nice but by no stretch a “masterpiece.” After finishing the residential area, we paused for a moment at a fantastic church built in the early 1900s. It was a pretty cool mashup of the Pantheon and Hagia Sophia, and although we didn’t get to go in, I loved it a whole lot! Finally, we made it to the promised land of true modern architecture! The Parco della Musica (or the pill-bugs as I will call them) is a pretty big complex of three bugs that house various music-related program (gallery, practice/performance spaces, a museum, etc.) surrounding a public space that doubles as an outdoor auditorium. The skin of the pill bugs is pretty great, and their steel contrasts very nicely with the brick of the rest of the complex.
After talking here for a little while we split up to explore. I first found a small exhibit on the ruins of ancient villas that were discovered during the construction of the project, and they even left the majority of them alone! From there I came to the small musical instrument gallery where there were tons of old instruments from all over, and even a group of people practicing at the end! After finishing up a very limited tour of the interior of the main bug, we walked around the outside (the area behind the outdoor space is raised up a level to create a park that houses the bugs). My favorite part of the buildings was the exposed structure (a Piano trademark), mostly in the form of staircases. These would poke out of the bugs like little legs, and the view into the skin from them was fantastic. In a crazy plot-twist, the shells turned out to be wooden on the inside, and the combination of wood and steel here was pretty amazing.
After finishing the tour around the space we met back up and set off for our final group stop: The Maxxi Museum. The building was designed by Zaha Hadid (yay more modernism!) and was fantastic! She is the champion of fluid architecture (not to be confused with Gehry’s blobs and crumpled paper), and although the original design was far broader in its intervention, the existing building is pretty great. We wandered around the exterior space for a while looking at all the pieces that she had designed and at all the awesome views through spaces. Once we were in, the building just continued to impress! The entry area was a massive space filled with flowing staircases that cut through the air at every angle (like MC Escher!).
Every exhibit here gets its own gallery space, and this division creates the most wonderful procession of spaces imaginable; the architecture alone makes this building great, but with the art inside of it making an impact upon the space, it was just heaven! One of my favorite parts about the galleries was how the new-age digital art (I don’t really get it all, but it looks nice!) utilized sound a great deal, so there would be a series of sounds coming at you when you stood still in various places; a departure from the normal gallery. Probably the best part about the building on the inside was the shutter system that ran like an inverted river across the ceiling of every space. They could be modulated to allow various amounts of light in, and also acted as a cool guiding tool to get you through the building. Some random highlights: original Corbusier drawings (the Maison Domino which is a huge deal for us and really boring for anyone else), an exhibit on Superstudio, lots of furniture, some really cool movies (Dolls vs. Dictators was my favorite!) and even a supermodel being photographed in the uppermost gallery!
After we finished here and said goodbye, we took the Metro back into the city for Italian class. But before we got there, as we passed the Spanish Steps we noticed something amazing!!!! There were three Lamborghinis sitting outside on display to advertise the release of the 2011 Aventador!!! The Aventador is my new favorite car by far (haha), and the contrast between it and the 1980s Lambo next to it (and the ‘90s one that wasn’t as great) was cool to enjoy. After we finished drooling over the cars we went to class, where we got to go out and ask real people for directions to places, as well as make fun collages and learn about ordering at a pizzeria (we are already experts). After class we took another peek at the cars before getting gelato again! From there Laura, Yun, Tiantian and I went to the studio to print our boarding passes for Barcelona!!! Sadly, the night got about a billion times more stressful when we found out that we couldn’t print yet and that the fee was 60 euro to print at the airport (damn you Ryanair!). But thankfully, we found an Internet cafe on the way back where we printed, so all was well. After some prep and scheduling, it was off to bed for a few hours before we leave at 6!!
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