The Parisch Church of Dio Padre Misericordioso built as part of the
Vicarage project “50 Churches for Rome 2000” was designed as a mark and
symbol of the Grand Jubilee of 2000 it takes on the idea of a ship, a
ship which ploughs the seas of the Third millennium. The Jubilee Church
has been conceived as a new center for a somewhat isolated housing
quarter in the Tor Tre Teste area, located outside central Rome. The
three shells discretely imply the Holy Trinity, the reflecting pool
symbolizes water in the ritual of Baptism.
The MAXXI National Museum of the XXI Century Arts is a new institution of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities of Italy. In 1998 the ministry advertised the international call for tenders and among the 273 candidacies the winning project of Zaha Hadid convinced the jury because of its possibilities to integrate with the urban texture and the innovative and highly creative architectonical solution. The complexity of shapes, their sinuous outline, the variation and interlacing of dimensions, determine a spatial and functional plot of great complexity.
Built for the 1960 Olympics, the palazzetto is a modest sports stadium
in an innovative concrete dome. Designed by Pier Luigi Nervi it hosted
boxing among other sports during the Olympic Games. The innovative dome
is made of ribbed reinforced concrete. The lower half of the dome has
continuous ribbon of window the whole way around the circular stadium,
beneath the ribbed, white-painted concrete ceiling. Stunning!
The Parco della Musica is a large public music complex on the north side
of Rome, exploiting a spacious site that was part of the 1960 Olympic
area. It is composed of three separate giant bug-like halls positioned around an open air
amphitheatre, the halls look like three enormous ‘music boxes’, whose
colours and materials recall those of the domes dotting the urban
landscape of Rome. Each concert hall differs from the other in terms of
dimension and functions, but they are all characterized by an extreme
flexibility and versatility of the space. By these means, space can be
regulated and adjusted to the nature of performance, where floor and
ceiling can be moved to adjust the acoustic properties of the wall.
The Ara Pacis Museum, located along the Tiber River, near the Ponte
Cavour, is an
integral part of the urban context of the Augustean Area. It is designed
to house the ancient relic, the Ara Pacis Augustae, a sacrificial altar
dating to 9 B.C., originally housed in a building designed by Vittorio
Ballio Morpurgo in 1938.
The only surviving part of the Morpurgo structure is a low travertine
wall that Mussolini had engraved with the "Res Gestae" (the Acts of the
Divine Augustus). The new design protects and enhances the relic. The
travertine comes from the same quarry as the stone that was used to
build the Piazza of the Emperor Augustus in the Thirties; it was also,
more recently, used by Richard Meier for the Getty Centre in Los Angeles
and other important architectural works.
How to reconcile a vision of the divine, something that has generally
been represented using the symbolic forms of the circle, sphere and
central plan, with the requirements of a modern culture that tends to
avoid the ideals of wholeness, perfection and hierarchy? Sartogo
Architetti intelligently resolved this problem in Rome. The first step
entailed designing a semi-circular church hall and adding to this solid
the void of an exterior apse, also semi-circular in form, so that the
two forms complete one another. The second step consisted of placing a
large round window, reminiscent of medieval rose windows, in the
perimeter wall. This is coupled with the emerging form of a semi-dome,
containing a parish centre, suggesting the possible transformation of
the virtual circumference of the plan into a sphere. The path that
separates the church from the parish centre is a highly symbolic space
and converges towards a focal point that is dominated by a narrow and
elongated cross.
Ciao!
// Niklas
