rarefraction
Fall 2019 Design Studio
University of Waterloo School of Architecture- Rome campus
Supervisors: Beatrice Bruscoli, Lorenzo Pignatti
Architecture_Archaeology_Anastylosis
Location: Parco Celio, Italy
In collaboration with B. Tien
Topography: τόπος (topos, "place") and -γραφία (-graphia, "writing")
Anastylosis (from the Ancient Greek: αναστήλωσις, -εως; ανα, ana = "again", and στηλόω = "to erect [a stela or building]") is an archaeological term for a reconstruction technique whereby a ruined building or monument is restored using the original architectural elements to the greatest degree possible.
Site context
The archaeological area is both a rare historical resource and a unique urban phenomenon: an enormous open space of the most universal cultural significance, located at the center of a contemporary capital. The outlines of ancient Rome are preserved in a landscape setting, an urban Arcadia of architectural fragments and natural elements which may evoke an ideal of a lost culture, or allude to the continuity of the remains concealed beneath the modern city. In certain remote corners, relatively untouched by the excavations, one is easily reminded that just over a century ago most of the area was actually rural. The ruins stood as landforms of exotic vegetation native to the soil of Rome. Urban expansion and excavation have distorted the traditional relationship between the remains, the countryside and the city. The role of archaeology in the modern city remains ambiguous and unresolved, but the problem must be addressed at a cultural level.
Approach
Located between the Colosseum, Palatino Hill, and Circo Massimo, rarefraction intents to understand free space and public space with the absence of architecture. With the aim to bring back to life, forgotten histories and buildings of Rome, an ongoing, open excavation of the Aqua Claudia survives at a -3 level.
Ground Level
-1 Level
-2 Level
Exposed-3 Level
Analog model [35” x 15’’ x 4’’]
“FREESPACE describes a generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the core of architecture’s agenda, focusing on the quality of space itself.
FREESPACE focuses on architecture’s ability to provide free and additional spatial gifts to those who use it and on its ability to address the unspoken wishes of strangers.
FREESPACE celebrates architecture’s capacity to find additional and unexpected generosity in each project - even within the most private, defensive, exclusive or commercially restricted conditions.
FREESPACE provides the opportunity to emphasize nature’s free gifts of light - sunlight and moonlight, air, gravity, materials - natural and man-made resources.
FREESPACE encourages reviewing ways of thinking, new ways of seeing the world, of inventing solutions where architecture provides for the well being and dignity of each citizen of this fragile planet.
FREESPACE can be a space for opportunity, a democratic space, un-programmed and free for uses not yet conceived. There is an exchange between people and buildings that happens, even if not intended or designed, so buildings themselves find ways of sharing and engaging with people over time, long after the architect has left the scene. Architecture has an active as well as a passive life.
FREESPACE encompasses freedom to imagine, the free space of time and memory, binding past, present and future together, building on inherited cultural layers, weaving the archaic with the contemporary.”
-Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara
La Biennale di Venezia 2018