:: ROMA INTERROTTA_1978_BY 12 ARCHTECTS
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
:: ROMA INTERROTTA: SECTOR IV(CORRECTIONS TO NOLL’S PLAN)_JAMES STIRLING_1978
Megalomania is the privilege of a chosen few. Piranesi who made his plan in 1761 was surely a megalomaniac frustrated architect (MFA), as also Boullee, Vanbrugh, Soane, Sant’Elia, Le Corbusier, etc., and it is within this distinguished company as an MFA architect that we make our proposal. The megalomaniac architect is most frustrated with regard to projects designed but not built, so the initial decision was to revise Nolli’s plan incorporating all our unbuilt works. Soon we were trying to incorporate the entire oeuvre, and in order to sustain a momentum a rigorous method was necessary. Therefore the selection of projects, is limited to those appropriate to aspects of context and association either to the circumstances of 1748, or to JS projects at the time they were designed—sometimes to both. ….
This ‘contextual - associational’ way of planning is somewhat akin to the historic process (albeit timeless) by which the creation of built form is directly influenced by the visual setting and is a confirmation and a complement to that which exists. This process may be similar to that of ‘Collage City’ (and the teaching of Colin Rowe), and the working method of a few architects (e.g.: O M Ungers), and stands in comparison to the irrationality of most post-war planning—supposedly ‘rational’, but frequently achieving a reversal of natural priorities.
James Stirling, “Nolli Sector IV - James Stirling,” Architectural Design (vol. 49, no. 3-4, 1979).
It is obvious that Stirling cared deeply for his unbuilt works, and he was no doubt well aware of the unfortunate dormancy of architectural designs destined to exist only as drawings. It is quite natural to ponder a “what if” world when looking at the plans and elevations of buildings that were never built. Similar to Michel Foucault’s “archeological” methodology, which penetrates into the past seeking thoughts that are no more but perhaps once were, Stirling unearthed a “virtual city/museum” of his own architecture within the context of eighteenth-century Rome. The scheme is like a temporal inversion of Piranesi’s Ichnographia of the Campo Marzio where, instead of a past Rome that never was, the plan presents a future Rome that will never be.
:: The Piranesi Variations_2012 Venice Biennale
_A Field of Diagrams_Eisenman Architects
_A Field of Walls_Dogma_2012 Venice Biennale
Still on the Central Pavilion’s main axis is The Piranesi Variations, curated by Peter Eisenman. The theory-minded architect invited Belgian architects Dogma, students from Yale School of Architecture, and Jeffrey Kipnis, who in turn worked with students from Ohio State University Knowltoon School of Architecture, to “revisit, examine, and reimagine Piranesi’s 1762 folio collection of etchings, Campo Marzio dell’antica Roma.” Like the Grafton/Mendes da Rocha installation, models are the focus here, occupying the middle of the space near related drawings on the walls. Not surprisingly, Eisenman’s contribution, “A Field of Diagrams,” is immediately recognizable as Eisenman, a layering of various grids at different sizes and angles on top of each other. Even topping off the gridscape are buildings that look like unrealized designs by the architect.
Dogma’s “A Field of Walls” is Eisenman’s antithesis; it “reconsiders the power relations” of Piranesi’s etchings through a parallel series of wall-like buildings. It is brutal and imposing in its repetition and its dominance over the landscape. Neverthless, there is something appealing in Dogma’s reading of Piranesi and the diagram they created, as if the parallel walls — something that could never be willed into existence — have a clarity that invites pondering what they might mean.
http://www.world-architects.com/en/pages/page_item/biennale-architettura-2012-3/
:: Shore Bridge + Mediterranean City_COSA SPA (Andrea Costa and Deborah Sanguineti)_Project heracles#1_2011 Domus 949
