The last day in Rome.
What a great semester it's been, I don't know yet how to put it into words, maybe time and hindsight will allow me to have an accurate understanding. But right now, I feel like it's in the old movies when the couple is at the station and the woman is leaving and the man is chasing after her but then the platform stops and the train keeps going. I don't know if I'm on the train or the one chasing it, but I think the feeling is close to the same.
This morning I went with some fellow archi-holics to Rome's one and only Mosque. It was a really beautiful building, not because of the plan or the elevation (which were interesting, but not exactly overwhelming), in this case "God was in the Details". Since Mosques can't have any physical depictions of God (statues, paintings, etc.) the arches and the tiles have to serves as decoration. The tiles were interesting, mostly floral arrangements, but the arches are the ones who stole the show. They twisted around into something similar to northern gothic vaulted ceilings,
http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/1052/865661.JPG
http://www.nycerome.com/rome-hotels-images/areas-of-rome-images/auditorium-area-pictures/mosque-in-rome.jpg
but was still mimicing (or perhaps was being mimicked by) the large chandeliers hanging down from them.
http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2003/feb/europe_muslims/five/main.jpg
After that I walked by the Parco Della Musica, which I have talked about in great length previously. This time they had turned part of the building into a ice-skating rink and the other part into a house for "Babba Natale", If you can guess who that is. Hint: Kids were freaking out.
Then onto EUR.
EUR stands for *translated* Universal Exposition in Rome a plan conceived by Mussolini, begun in 1935 finished in 1942. The area is the best standing example of Fascist Architecture in Rome, or anywhere else really. The eerie overly-pristeen nature of the project comes from the combination of two rivaling architectural movements who wanted to get their foot in the door with the growing political party. On one side were the Neo-Classists, people who believed that the only way to be truly great was to embody the past, on the other side were the "Rationalists" who were the Italian students of Modernism.
As a side note, the requirements to be a "Modernist" in the field of Architecture essentially means that you have to follow, or at least respect, the teachings of Le Corbusier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier
However Italian architecture dose'nt really grasp the man who says "the house is a machine for living" so they take several of his ideas but fuse them with abstract concepts from Vitruvius and the Renaissance.
So by the combination of the Rationalists and the Neo-Classists we get EUR. The idea being that yes, we have all this great history, but we also have a great future. However the plan was never completely finished as the Fascists were ousted out of power in WWII. I had been by EUR once or twice before hand and had referenced ideas about it in a presentation I did, but I did'nt get a chance to really explore it until today.
When I was there, the whole area was almost deserted, It was like a sea of travertine and I was the only one there. The buildings (including the famous "square colosseum") had a stiffness to them that was unnatural.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/PalazzodellaCiviltaItaliana.jpg
But as near as I can tell in all the concept drawings I had seen of them, all of the buildings were shown with only a few scale people in them, not a large crowd, so maybe I was seeing them in the right setting it's just you, the travertine and the arches.
You can tell walking around that this is a work in progress, a failed work in progress. Almost like an allegory for Fascism in Italy on the whole. Not that it wasn't interesting, but rather the area now lacks the sterness that the shapes are meant to convey. The colored apartment buildings of Rome are starting to sneak into this area and the regemented white shapes of EUR don't do well with competition.
People aren't supposed to live like the architects of EUR envisioned, they need to be more human. And in the end that's the problem with the buildings at EUR, they aren't built to Human-Scale. I mean they may have the proportions for doorways and steps, but just walking around you can tell these buildings aren't meant for people, they're meant for an idea.
I like the buildings there as objects, but I'm not convinced about them being livable spaces is I guess what i'm trying to say.
OK, so now it's past 11:20 and I have to be up tomorrow by 5:30..Goodnight all!
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