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Just Urbanism
thoughts about urbanism
Posted on August 29, 2007 …
, originally uploaded by shadowplay
Empire State Building
Empire State Building 02, originally uploaded by plemeljr
KL International Aiport
KL International Aiport, originally uploaded by heather
On Mussolini’s Fascist Rome
Colosseo Quadrato, originally uploaded by Daniele Muscetta
Amazing article, The empire’s new clothes, about Mussolini’s twenty year building and renovation spree which remade Rome as much as Napoleon remade Paris.
Il Duce was obsessed with Rome, both as physical city and historical symbol. He wanted his fellow Italians to absorb “Romanita”, or Roman-ness. “Rome is our point of departure and reference,” he said. “We dream of a Roman Italy, that is to say wise, strong, disciplined and imperial.”
…
He even called his grandiose projects “the war that we prefer”, leading some historians to argue that Italian fascism could have had a peaceful future. They are wrong: to the fascists, a building site was always the antechamber to a battlefield.
Nonetheless, for 20 years, Mussolini could do pretty much what he wanted, using the resources of the state. He began by knocking things down. Demolition was as important as construction and, as a result, Rome today looks nothing like it did in the 1920s. Then, cheap tenements hemmed in many of the great classical monuments until they were all but invisible. Mussolini talked about “liberating” the Roman ruins. “All the monuments [of ancient Rome] will stand in their necessary solitude,” he proclaimed. “Like the great oak, they must be freed from all the darkness that surrounds them.”
What continually frustrates me about these sorts of reviews are the lack of photos and maps. To alleviate this, I created a Google Mashup of Mussolini’s Rome to follow. Or you can view it below:
View Larger Map
Interesting that the twenty years of Mussolini’s rule have almost been expunged from thought and history (talk about the giant elephant in the room) yet his legacy in built form will live on. I didn’t even realize that the Via dei Fori Imperiali connecting the Palazzo Venezia to the Colosseum was a recent urban intervention. It is almost as if history has been uprooted from context because the man who begot the interventions has been relegated to the far reaches of memory; as if, in polite company, it is uncouth to speak of his works.
Update May 2012
Mussolini’s modern Rome by travel writer Susan Spano published in 2009 feels very similar to the above FT article:
Stray cats padding through the four ancient temples at Largo Argentina, a square just west of Piazza Venezia, inhabit another frame of Il Duce’s dream: archaeological Rome. The Largo Argentina site was discovered when Mussolini ordered the clearing of what was then a slum as part of a wide-ranging project to facilitate traffic and improve hygiene.
But after visiting the square in 1928, he vowed that new construction would never obscure the truncated columns and scattered capitals of the Republican-era temples. Largo Argentina remains a time-warping, mind-bending place where the modern and ancient worlds collide.
Excavating and opening access to ruins — especially those from the age of Il Duce’s hero Emperor Caesar Augustus — became a Fascist fundamental. Mussolini cared little for the art and architecture of subsequent, decadent periods, resulting in the now-lamented demolition of Baroque churches and whole medieval districts, including the winding lanes on the west side of the Tiber River that took pilgrims to St. Peter’s Basilica. In 1936, these were eradicated to make room for the soullessly broad and straight Via della Conciliazione.
This is the description of the Borgo (Rioni di Roma), a semi-obsession of mine.
Maison de Verre
Maison de Verre by François Halard
Maison de Verre, The Best House in Paris:
No house in France better reflects the magical promise of 20th-century architecture than the Maison de Verre. Tucked behind the solemn porte-cochere of a traditional French residence on Rue Saint-Guillaume, a quiet street in a wealthy Left Bank neighborhood, the 1932 house designed by Pierre Chareau challenges our assumptions about the nature of Modernism. For architects it represents the road not taken: a lyrical machine whose theatricality is the antithesis of the dry functionalist aesthetic that reigned through much of the 20th century.
Its status as a cult object was enhanced by the house’s relative inaccessibility. For decades it was seen only by a handful of scholars and by patients of a gynecologist whose offices took up the first floor. Later it was mostly used as occasional guest quarters for friends of the doctor’s family, who had long since settled into a traditional 18th-century apartment across the courtyard.
Check out Maison de Verre Flickr Photos
Maison de Verre, The Best House in Paris
Domino Sugar as Museum
granular, originally uploaded by nj dodge
Could Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg Brooklyn be converted to a museum like the former Bankside Power Plant, now Tate Modern? The people behind Domino: An Alternate Plan are floating just that idea. What Curbed deservedly calls a pipe dream is an intriguing idea. Just like the adaptive reuse of the Washburn Mill to the Mill City Museum (photos) there is ample prior art to converting wholesale industrial buildings into museums.
But this will never happen in New York City.
The best we can hope for is that the either the Sugar Box Building (the one with the Domino Sign) or the Central Processing House will be converted in exchange for more development rights. Meaning, taller buildings with more floor area ratio given over to condos. Saving a large amount of Domino for a few extra floors of condos seems like a good compromise, but the details of the deal would mean the difference between a nouveau Tudor City or a Trump development.
The biggest problem lies in finding a tenant for the many tens of thousands of square feet of exhibition space, all of which would need a hefty capital budget to renovate Domino. This is in addition to the space at the World Trade Center Cultural Center, which will be vacant now that the Drawing Center was given the boot. The cast of characters who could afford the sort of improvements and programming are small:
- MoMA – Still paying off the Midtown expansion, and set to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/arts/design/03muse.html?ex=1325480400&en=c6df4a92992aaf37&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss"expand again, is stretched thin
- The Whitney – On, and off again expansion plans to its’ main building and flirting with building on the Highline make a Domino expansion unlikely
- The Met – This site is in Brooklyn, enough said as far as The Met is concerned
- Guggenheim – Currently renovating the Frank Lloyd Wright building, the Guggenheim has constantly been trying to develop an alternate site in NYC, most recently with Frank Gehry (multiple times); of all the big players, this is probably the most likely.
- Dia – just pulled out of the Highline site and seems to be at a mission drift
For Domino to be converted in a respectful manner to a museum and residential housing, the city and institutional organizations need to lend their support and guidance to the project.
Not that you can’t dream.
Wednesday loves links more than Monday
- After Katrina, A Lonely Homecoming
Today, nearly two years after the storm, 11 of 14 properties on the block stand vacant, and in interviews, all but one of those who left indicated they have no intention of returning. Far from rising from the devastation of Katrina, this slice of St. Bernard Parish remains a desolate and depressing place.
- Los Angeles’s Development Has Many Centers
A trend of dense downtown development in Los Angeles has some calling the city’s new urban growth pattern a move towards “Manhattanization”. But Bill Fulton argues that the focus isn’t on just one area, but many transit-oriented “centers”.
- VEGETABLES AND CONCRETE: Urban gardeners are turning vacant lots into profitable produce plots
- Rebirth Of Cincinnati’s Historic Over-the-Rhine Neighborhood
Cincinnati’s historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood is seeing levels of investment and activity that haven’t been seen there for many, many years. The largest collection of Italianate architecture in the U.S. is finally starting to see new life.
- Southeast Queens Is Split Over Makeover Proposal
- Shanghai is Building The World’s Largest Urban Rail Transit System
- Renderings of Guangzhou Twin Towers – in Chinese, so you have to guess which architect goes with which building (can you spot Rem’s building?)
