Day 50 (5/10/11)

This morning we had a lecture to attend bright and early at the school, so we trekked out there knowing that it was going to be tough to focus after not a lot of sleep. The talk was about the river Arno and its significance in Rome and how it has changed over the years. Sadly our premonitions were correct and it was tough to stay awake so I ended up just doing some sketches for studio. I tried to think about the articulation of the skin of the canopy pieces, as well as ideas of circulation, connections to the existing buildings, pathways. After the lecture was over we set off for our second attempt at seeing the EUR. We finally made it there after some real preparation for the public transportation, and what a great adventure it was!
After the subway ride we came up into a pretty modern space filled with some neat buildings, especially a very dark and foreboding looking building that I really liked! We walked over to the main bridge to see the end of the small city and saw a pretty fantastic green space that sat along the river, so we set off for there. The green space ended up being a terrific axis that led up to a stadium-like building, filled with various fountains that all shot different directions. We sat on the grass along the river and had our lunch and just relaxed for a while before heading back up to the road to go see the stadium.
After a pretty great set of stairs we came to the back end of the arena, which was gated off so we could only look at it from afar. After we finished there we walked back across the river to begin our tour of Fascist architecture. The main street of the city was pretty great and had a giant obelisk sitting in the center of a nice roundabout. Our first stop was to a Fuksas (fooksauce) project that is in a pretty severe state of “in-progress,” but was really great. The entire steel frame was up, and seeing the various floor slabs floating there combined with the pretty tall exterior frame was awesome. We kept walking down this street until we came to the Natural Prehistoric Museum, which started with a pretty great public space surrounded by some very angry colonnades. The scale of these spaces was pretty amazing and walking through these concrete towers was exhilarating.
From the end of this space began a pretty great axis that ran all the way to the end of the “city limits,” so we set off for that. Along the way there were a series of pretty great buildings, one had an awesome external stair that looked a lot like a drill bit (like the Lloyd’s Building from London!). We ended in a piazza that was framed on either side by two identical and rather oppressive concrete structures and capped by the colonnade that we had seen earlier. The stairs leading up to it were overrun by (who else?) the Italian Youth, so we only stayed for a little bit. My favorite part of this space was how the stair were only a part of the procession up to the colonnade, while the rest were small grassy hills that allowed different modes of relaxing. This combined with the green space running down the center of the main avenue that had started to take over the concrete around it (lots of eerie but beautiful broken benches) created a pretty great relationship between this very rigid and tectonically articulated space and the freedom of nature.
Once we left the piazza we backtracked a little bit until we came to a side street that led us to the Palazzo di Congresso, which sat in a pretty nice public space that had a great view down another axial street as well as into a public park. The exterior was pretty nice, and since it was closed today we walked around to the front side. The concrete style was pretty much the same, as was the nice (but disappointingly empty) hardscape in front. After some pictures in front we were presented with the most important axis in the area: that which leads directly to the “Square Colosseum,” (Palazzo della Civilta Italiana), the highlight of our trip. The road up was pretty great again, and once we got to the Palazzo I set off to explore while they sketched. Sadly, the space has been closed to the public for a while, so we could only get to the outer edge. The building is a many-story concrete block perforated with many archways, which leads to our nickname for it. While the mass of the concrete structure should be overbearing, the sunlight on it combined with the glass tower that sits just inside of the main box creates a softening effect, making this hulking mass appear more approachable. As I continued around, the same motif was present on each side, although the “back” side presented a massive staircase that lead up to the edge. One thing I thought was pretty interesting was how the buildings for Congress and for the People are set upon the same axis, built in a similar style, and respond quite well to each other through the articulated views between them. If only the government and the people were on the same page like this all the time!
After finishing my tour of the building I walked over to a parking garage, which offered a pretty great view of the dome of a church nearby. To my chagrin, this garage was considered private so I was asked to leave before getting any good pictures. Once we had gathered back up, we all walked around one last time, took some pictures in front of the Palazzo, and left for the Metro. The EUR was a pretty fantastic place; I think the grand scale and the consistent design really created a great space, and the idea of the city within a city was a pretty interesting motif. From the Metro we came back to Termini station where we took a bus back near our school.
We met back up with our group and worked on Italian and took a quick nap before heading to class. Today we learned about taking trips, interacting at a train station (perfect since we will be doing a lot of that this weekend!), and discussing vacation. After we finished there we went home and made some dinner. Tonight I made pasta with my own version of vodka sauce: sautéed onions and garlic, red sauce and heavy cream all cooked in the skillet!! It turned out great and I am excited to keep cooking!! After dinner we worked on studio for a long time to prepare for desk crits tomorrow before heading to bed!