FACOLTA’ di ARCHITETTURA di ROMA
thesis project / 1990-91
This
year long thesis project was designed with the guidance and advisement of Aldo
Rossi while studying at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia
(IUAV). The project began with extensive studies of Rome, it’s urban patterns,
it’s timeline of civilizations piled on top of each other and it’s
infinitely complex collage of urban spaces and architecture. Each layer of planning,
construction and building represents the human desires, the politics, the technology
and the artistic aspirations of it’s time. Instead of a clear, solitary
and objectified design intervention, the design seeks to reflect this richness
in diversity of time, place and people by responding with a complex collage
and matrix of related but separate spaces and experiences.
The project to redesign and add onto the existing school of architecture in
Rome was an actual competition that had been held the previous year. My design
responds to the brief and program that was created for this competition. The
site is adjacent to the Villa Borghese, on a hill overlooking central Rome.
The design incorporates this building in which 15,000 students are enrolled
the program. The design of the additions continues the rhythms established by
this building in plan and elevation, extruding the datum lines, foundations
and proportions. The proposed plan makes reference to the composition of the
classic renaissance church plan, of vestibule, sanctuary, nave, aisles, chapels,
altar and dome.
Two wings that have been created on the site. The one to the south houses all
of the components of the design curriculum, the one to the north is the center
for the sciences and construction technologies. Running through each of these
wings is a free open space to be occupied by the students, laboratories in the
science wing and studios in the design wing. In both cases, the foundation spaces
are lecture halls, the brick volumes that sit on top of these are faculty offices
and administration spaces. At the head of the site sits the aula magna, the
main lecture hall.