ROMA XXXV

University of Waterloo
School of Architecture
2014

WALL
WORKS
ROMA XXXV
University of Waterloo
School of Architecture
2014

WALL
WORKS
 CONTENTS

1 Intro

5 The New Grand Tour - Lorenzo Pignatti

9 Point, Line - Beatrice Bruscoli
11 The Wall as Architecture, Symbol and Idea: Rome and
Campanella’s Poetic City of the Sun - Tracey Eve Winton
15 Matta-Clark and Wang Shu: Walls as Profanation and
Remembrance - Caterina Padoa Schioppa
17 Rock ‘n’ Wall: Designing the Absence - Francesco Mancini

23 Sites
25 Typologies
© University of Waterloo
School of Architecture 27 Perpendicular
7 Melville Street South 59 Parallel
Cambridge, Ontario N1S 2H4 85 Underground
University of Waterloo 97 Vertical
Rome Program
Piazza S. Apollonia 3, 00153 129 Grafting House
Rome, Italy

Faculty: Beatrice Bruscoli, Rick

Haldenby, Francesco Mancini,
Caterina Padoa Schioppa,
Lorenzo Pignatti, Tracey Eve
Winton

Editor: Stephane Gaulin-Brown

with special thanks to Ila

Berman, Rick Haldenby, and
Alex Willms
Intro

The University of Waterloo Rome Programme aims to and corresponds to the dark Museum of the Walls (now closed.)
address the city of Rome as one of the most significant learning Some of the most monumental gates, such as the Porta Maggiore,
experiences in architecture and urbanism. Within the curriculum of are isolated within circuits of vehicular movement. Some places
the School of Architecture, The Rome Program is seen as a moment that are important within the history of Rome, such as the breach
to confront notions of urbanity in a highly significant physical and of Porta Pia, are left to themselves along the perimeter of the walls.
cultural context. Rome certainly presents lessons for architecture These sites lack any visual demarcation to relay their import in
and urbanism. It can illustrate and present, like an open text-book, Rome’s urban heritage, and remain potential sites for future urban
the relationship between urban morphology, architecture typology, development.
and the challenge of designing within a specific context. Thus the This project aims to give the Aurelian Walls the importance
term will be theoretically structured around the critical relationship that they should have for the city of Rome. It proposes a sustainable,
between design and context, as a paradigm for contemporary design. secure, and continuous pedestrian and cycle path- Wall Walk - that
In an attempt to avoid self-referential solutions or object buildings, would allow visitors to enjoy one of the biggest and most important
the work of the Studio will be consistently oriented towards the monuments of the city unique in its entirety.
search for a strong dialogue between the physical and metaphorical Moreover, there are many residual spaces along the
forma urbis of the city and the new architecture that it contains. Walls that could be re-generated and re-used as spaces of cultural
The theme of investigation of the 2014 Waterloo Rome significance. We have envisaged that some of these sites would
Programme is one of the most important in Rome, as represented by become new cultural hubs for the city, and could be places where the
the Aurelian Walls. An initiative called Wall Walk has been recently history of the city could be relayed through thematic references and
launched as a multidisciplinary project that interprets the Aurelian narratives.
Walls as a paradigm of the city of Rome. In fact, the Aurelian
Walls have always been a symbolic and historical permanence
through the long and complex history of the city. Many parts of the
urban landscape of Rome have been lost or transformed over the
centuries, but the enclosure of walls built by the emperor Aurelian
in just five years, from 270-275, have survived mostly intact to
this day. Originally a defensive element of the city, the walled
perimeter has now become a kind of linear tape that runs through
Rome: sometimes incorporated into the urban fabric, sometimes
accompanied by arteries of movement, and sometimes visible within
a natural landscape. Its character and visibility changes depending
on context, but the Aurelian Walls retain their charm, symbolic and
monumental integrity because of their highly recognizable character.
Today, it is almost impossible to walk continuously along
the entire length of the wall, which is almost 19 km long. There are
interruptions, obstacles, and tortuous paths that make full navigation
difficult. The interior walkway is accessible only for a short distance,

1 2
3 4
The New Grand Tour
-Lorenzo Pignatti
The grand tour is a phenomenon and term originating in
the 18th century as a fundamental learning experience, and almost
represents a type of initiation. The tour – undertaken by artists,
architects, sculptors and scholars of arts and letters – usually
includes Italy.
The grand tour was not actually new at the time of its
association. It goes way back to the 15th century, when its motivation
was a diverse number of interests. Individuals were inspired by the
birth of humanism, the invention of perspective, and a fascination
with classicism. Since the Renaissance, many architects have visited
Rome to sketch the ruins and learn from antiquity. Palladio drew
the Roman baths and then referenced them in his principal church
and villa designs. In the 18th century, Piranesi was obsessed with
antiquity and poured amazing creativity into his portrayals of the
world and architecture of Rome, making interpretations that were
half reality and half fantasy. Le Corbusier saw his visits to Italy as
crucial moments in his professional development. In 1911, a grand
tour took him first to the Balkans, then Greece and finally Italy. This
allowed him to closely study classical architecture and visit locations
such as Pompeii, Rome, and Hadrian’s Villa.
The stereometric forms of Roman architecture, the linear
silhouette of the Belvedere Courtyard overlooking the city, the
mighty arches, the terracing and the great walls, as well as his
famous drawing of the wall of the Pecile at Hadrian’s Villa are some
of the most forceful images published in his Carnets…
In Toward an Architecture, which features Le Corbusier’s
famous sketch based on Pirro Ligorio’s view of Rome, he noted:
“The Lesson of Rome is for the wise, for those who know and can
appreciate, for those who can resist, who can verify. [...]. To send
architecture students in Rome is to cripple them for life. The Prix de
Rome and the Villa Medici are the cancer of French architecture.”
Rome is not for the superficial or semi-educated. Intensity and
critical depth are required to fully grasp the lesson of Rome.
Today, the lesson of Rome is also re-examined and re-
interpreted in light of the growing number of universities that have
launched study programmes in Italy, particularly in Rome, since
5 6
the 1970s. Most of the university programmes originated in North
America, although more sporadic initiatives have been developed
in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the Middle East.
I believe this fascination with Rome emerged in the late 1960s
thanks to significant figures in the transatlantic architectural culture
of those times: Robert Venturi and Collin Rowe. Following his stay
at the American Academy in the mid-1950s and his subsequent
publication of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966),
which was extensively inspired by Rome, Venturi redirected the
focus of architectural thought back to history. Similarly, with
Collage City (1978), Collin Rowe advanced theories on urban-
planning design based on a process of collages and accumulated
fragments, his ideal model of this paradigm being Hadrian’s Villa.
North American culture subsequently discovered an interest in
historical legacies and their fragmentary and unfinished nature. In
the late 1980s, an important issue of Precis magazine, published
by Columbia University, entitled The Culture of Fragments (1987)
spoke of a new cultural stance in which the unfinished and
seemingly structurally unstable fragments are presented as a new
reference for a post-structuralist vision of architecture. Plans of
archaeological sites are found in drawings by Franco Purini, in plans
by Daniel Libeskind and in the fragmentary nature of some of Rem
Koolhaas’s early designs.
North American architecture programmes make trips to
Italy or cities such as Rome as an educational experience. Rome
and Italy are the main destination for North American students
who place a critical and profound form of “academic tourism” at
the core of their education. More than ever before, today’s students
need certainties and must cope with realities. They are enraptured
by personally touching ancient architecture and jotting down their
impressions in Moleskine notebooks. They are fascinated when they
grasp the scale and monumentality of the historical buildings. They
love the metaphorical references, narrations and interpretations, and
the innovation and technology in the architecture of times past.
 At the 2014 Venice Biennale, even one of the leading
advocates of globalisation, Rem Koolhaas, recorded his interest
in the Renaissance (and Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library in
particular) on the floor of the Corderie. Not long ago, he revisited it
to study it in greater detail. He eventually declared that the lesson
of the Laurentian Library is like “a dish best eaten cold and in
small doses.” This leads us back to Le Corbusier, who considered
Rome (or history) the damnation of all those who are hurried and
superficial, who do not wish to know and verify, and those who do not
want to devote the required time to properly understanding.

The lesson of Rome lives on because of the need for constant

verification.

published in Domus, n. 986, December 2014

Source: Victor Poon

7 University of Waterloo School of Architecture Class of 2014 8

Point, Line
-Beatrice Bruscoli
According to the new Master Plan of Rome, the Aurelian
Walls are one of the city’s infrastructural signs that will be strongly
invested in during future processes of transformation.
The Walls are recognised as a “primary urban structure”
that plays a central role in the rehabilitation of the historical city and
its physical forms. They should be restored and maintained but their
role should be also redefined, possibly with new meaning and new
purpose. Therefore, the Walls are considered here from two points
of view: one which strictly regards the issue of preservation, and
another which promotes the use of the walls for the dynamic of urban
mutations. The latter is what we are looking at, creating a moment
when those historical archeological monuments could escape their
life of preserved fragments, reduced to left over pieces that inhabited
residual spaces of marginality.
Almost 20 kilometers long, the walls of Rome are still
standing. This long line of preserved gates, bastion and towers,
broken at the crossing of the consular roads, runs smoothly above
diverse topographical conditions. It demonstrates a beautiful
layered history, which includes additions, erasures and physical
transformation.
More then a linear structure that cuts the city, the walls
are a sequence of events; a string with knots that were kept
together by the political act of closing off and defending the city.
The whole character of the Walls corresponded to that single and
straightforward purpose. With the disappearance of its original
symbolic value, the Walls miss their role and become purely
sequence of varied urban situations.
It could be said that the Walls lost their purity (in
intention and form) and that, today, they do not have an unitarian
character. But since their origin, at least formally, that single
character was not there: they enclose others, tombs, amphitheaters,
aqueducts; they appropriate parts of the city, built and un-built
areas. Afterwards, when they lost their defensive role, that inner
quality of accumulation and overlap rose to the point that the Walls
became a precinct ready for further fragmentation, construction
9 10
and demolition. The city around them has grown by marking those
morphological and functional differences, and the Walls in turn have
grown by becoming a terrain vague, a depleted land.
Up until now, the Walls are still a magnet for urban action.
The line of the Walls identifies with the City itself, with its rules and
its intensity of urban conditions. The Walls are not only a formal
figure that display its intrinsic ability to represent dichotomies. More
than that, the Walls perform their builder’s role of focal points, and
of centers where the city’s discontinuity arises.
Today, the Walls could not be read in the light of their
original program and could not be treated as archeological artifacts
separated by the process of urban production. The Walls should
not be exclusive objects of conservation and restoration. Their real
potential should be released.
Working on the Walls means to assume this artifact as
paradigm of the city itself, to recognize the multitude of situations
that exist around them, to engrave on them and to acknowledge
once more the fragmented nature of the city, and its archipelago
configuration.
The value of the following projects lies in the exploration of
various modes of intervention on/in/around/near the walls with the
finality of breaking this frozen moment in history and interrupting
the process of embalming of the monument.
The life of architectural objects depends on their incessant
use: a ceaseless flow of re-use that could be both about spaces and/
or materials. It is necessary to overcome an idealized version of
History, sterilized from everyday life and minor histories. The spaces
of the Walls should be re-invented giving new meaning and direction
to the monumental artifact and to the zones of abandonment that
surround it: the dismissed city and the dismissed archeology nourish
each other.
The Wall as Architecture, Symbol and Idea:
Rome and Campanella’s Poetic City of the Sun
-Tracey Eve Winton
In 1644, Pope Urban VIII augmented Rome’s Aurelian
Wall, the city’s third-century defensive boundary, fortifying
Trastevere and the Vatican with his Janiculum Wall. In Baroque
culture, the wall became a key armature for displaying and
embodying knowledge and order. How walls shift in meaning from
defensive structure to heuristic and didactic is demonstrated in a
book that Dominican monk Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) wrote
during the 26 years he languished in lightless Inquisition prisons
charged with sedition and heresy.
In 1602, Campanella wrote A Poetic City of the Sun. The
Idea of a Philosophical Republic. His utopian vision, influenced
by Plato’s Republic, demonstrated civic justice through permanent
geometrical order registered in the architecture of the city, giving
new dimensions to the ideal commonwealth genre. Situated on a
hill, his ideal city unfolds radially from a spacious piazza at the top
centred on a circular domed temple, cascading down the slope in
seven concentric rings of inhabitable walls constructed of palaces
and promenades. Each wall is named after one of the seven planets,
so that the city is presented as a map of the solar system. On the
plain below, the outermost wall forms defensive bastions fortified
with massive earthworks. Four radial streets lead from the centre
down to gates facing the cardinal directions.
The city walls are ornamented, exterior and interior, with
objects of knowledge. They resemble an early museum, or an inside-
out anatomy theatre. The result is a memory theatre at the scale of
a city, surpassing the small edifice Giulio Camillo built to help the
King of France recollect the entire universe. Camillo had theorized
that one could pattern the human memory on the cosmos itself. Using
architecture to structure his edifice of knowledge, one could express
by means of corporeal signs all invisible things that the human mind
could conceive. On account of this corporeal viewing, he called
it a theatre. Whereas Camillo encoded universal knowledge in
enigmatic memory images, Campanella directly presented the things
themselves, cued by Renaissance naturalism and recent scientific
pursuits towards uncovering the secrets of Nature. When this wasn’t
possible, artistic naturalism and perspective offered introspection
of a thing’s divine lineaments: “Wisdom … causes the exterior and
11
interior, the higher and lower walls of the city to be adorned with the
finest pictures, and to have all the sciences painted upon them in an
admirable manner.”
His solar city resembles a classical labyrinth with its
seven circuits, the circle and the cross, a template of cosmic order.
Its configuration recalls the myth of biblical Jericho (“a city in the
shape of the Moon”) and the fall of its famous labyrinthine walls.
Copernicus’ new heliocentric world picture moved the locus of
highest power to the centre of the universe, which the Sun —an
established symbol for God — now held. Campanella saw the Sun as
the divine source of all life, and his scheme reflects and illuminates
this modern hierarchy. His theurgic architecture is a giant magical
talisman that draws down heavenly powers to benefit its citizens
through its geometrical figuration, enhanced by specific qualities of
the objects and images which similarly act as amulets.
The Emperor Aurelian also built a Temple of the Sun at
the heart of his walled city, refounding the city of Rome as a vast
solar symbol, the umbilicated circle carved on Roman funerary
monuments as a symbol for eternity. Following this figura sacra,
Campanella’s urban walls, encyclopedically embellished recto and
verso to present all of Creation — mineral, vegetable, and animal
— as well as man’s historical achievements, are organized by
resemblance and difference into every division of human knowledge.
This forms his schematized memory city around the temple, whose
architectural surfaces depict the stars. The building at the centre of
the universe is a synoptic artifact that is also the luminous source
of all around it. Inside the temple, seven hanging lamps of eternal
flame model the solar system, and on its altar, under the oculus,
stand two globes: the Heavens and the Earth.
Like the Divine Creation, light from within creates
form by radiating into the world of matter, demonstrating how
Renaissance perspective reveals the true lineaments of reality.
Here the radiance is manifested in architecture: for Campanella,
along with metalworking, building was one of the two supreme arts.
Architecture was the paradigm for absolute knowledge, revealing the
unity of knowledge and its proper divisions. Learning took place by
inhabitation: dwelling, walking, looking, and cogitating.
12

Paleochristian and medieval builders had embedded into walls
architectural spoils and fragments of classical buildings, construing
this activity in terms of bodily resurrection. In the seventeenth
century, in the emerging institution of the museum, representation
operated at the collective scale, where a growing assembly of
finite objects continuously approximated the unknowable, infinite
universe. Early collections (by Imperato, Besler, Worm, Kircher,
Ashmole, Cospi, Calzolari, Olearius, etc.) displayed artifacts and
objects of natural history arrayed ornamentally over the architectural
interior. Eventually, these objects integrate with, then deepen or
‘fold,’ the mural surface. Ultimately objects react with each other —
the early roots of Surrealist juxtaposition and montage.
Baroque building shows this integration; Carlo Maderno’s
courtyard at Palazzo Mattei in Rome is a masterpiece. Campanella
reinvented the city as a chambered world of wonders and marvels,
arcana and exotica, mixing symbolic, iconic and indexical
representation. His impossible project represents the infinite
universe by a finite number of things. Nicholas of Cusa’s model of
human knowledge figured a many-sided polygon inscribed in the
circle of Divine knowledge, symbol of perfect unity: man’s figure
approaches the circle ever more closely but never can arrive at the
goal. This city not only models the heavens but also the world of
human understanding, and its relation to the heavens. Campanella’s
circular walls are composed of palaces, of rectilinear stone blocks.
But the objects still multiply in their myriad permutations and
combinations.
The sequence of temple and mural circuits stages the
creation of the world in Genesis, beginning from the Word of God
that creates Light. The interior of the first circuit (facing the temple)
shows mathematical figures, while the exterior depicts the entire
earth seen in conspect, and every country’s alphabets, laws, and
customs. On the interior of the second wall are stones, minerals,
and metals; geological samples are inset. The exterior shows seas,
rivers, lakes, and streams, wines, oils and other fluids; built into the
wall are vessels of pharmacological liquids, while all the phenomena
of the air are carved into the stones. The interior of the third wall
13
shows trees and herbs, with a living specimen of each plant growing
in earthenware vessels. On the exterior, species of fish are shown.
The fourth wall depicts birds on the interior, while the exterior wall
features creeping animals, from dragons and serpents to insects and
worms. On its inner surface the fifth wall shows larger land animals,
while the outer face depicts living creatures of immense magnitude.
The sixth circuit shifts from natural history to human history: on
the interior wall all the mechanical arts and their inventors are
illustrated, along with their instruments. The exterior commemorates
inventors in science, warfare, and law, and great men including
Moses, Pythagoras, Solon, Christ and the Apostles, Mohammed,
with other Greek and Roman gods and heroes. The seventh circuit
is simply a fortification holding back the prima materia of the
unordered world.
In 1629 Urban VIII freed Campanella to become his
personal astrologer. Together they made plans for a universal
monarchy to be headed by the pope: Rome was to become the City
of the Sun on Earth. The utopia did not materialize in time, and to
escape the Inquisition, in 1634 Campanella fled in disguise to the
court of France. There he surely influenced Rene Descartes, whose
1637 Discourse on Method employs idealized architecture and
geometrical urban form as a key metaphor for systems of knowledge.
One year after the ascension of the Sun King in France, and shortly
after Campanella’s death in exile, his friend Urban VIII constructed
that unreadable, fragmentary trace of his memory on Rome — the
Janiculum Wall.
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Walls as Profanation and Remembrance:
Matta-Clark and Wang Shu
-Caterina Padoa Schioppa
In “The Wall and the Books” (2000) Jorge Luis Borges
depicts an odd and unprecedented portrait of the first Chinese
Emperor, Shih Huang Ti, who became universally famous for the
construction of the Great Wall of China between 220 and 206 BC.
He is also renowned for the burning of all the books before him: an
annihilation of history and of the past. These two gigantic operations
are somehow intertwined, as those who were found concealing books
were branded with a red-hot iron and condemned to build the wall
until the day of their death.“ Perhaps the wall was a challenge and
Shih Huang Ti thought:
‘Men love the past and I can do nothing against this love, nor can
my executioners, but some time there will be a man who feels as I do, and he
will destroy my wall, as I destroyed the books, and will erase my memory and
will be my shadow and my mirror and will not be aware of it’.”
With his poetic style, Borges introduces the ambivalent, let
alone paradoxical, meaning of walls. Walls segment physical, mental
and even temporal space producing infinite couples of opposites:
inclusion / exclusion, safety / fear, public / private, beginning / end,
memory / oblivion. Walls are incredible devices where contradictory
actions take place. Actions of constructing and destructing at the
same time, actions of profanation and actions of remembrance.
The urban performances of Gordon Matta-Clark were
influenced by the 70s’ cutting-edge art in a deeply radical way.
Through perforations, incisions, cuts and removals, by opening
“a breach through a state of closure”, Matta-Clark has actively
desecrated not only the wall as an artefact, but also the domestic
space which the wall was protecting and hiding. His surgical
operations on facades, roofs and floors show the guts of intimacy and,
at the same time, his cutting subverts the viewer’s mental frame and
expectations, disorients and modifies the relationship between the
architectural inside and outside. With the aim of revitalizing spaces,
it frees from decay and anonymity what can still be transformed
into living material for artistic performances, destructs conventional
urban behaviours and dogmatic semantic meanings. Indeed,
15
ennobling what society discards, Matta-Clark has anticipated a
theme – i.e. the architectonic re-use and recycling – later embraced
by practitioners, philosophers, scientists, politicians.
Chinese architect Wang Shu in 2008 has followed this
them, using bricks stemming from a demolition work for the
construction of the Ningbo Museum of History.
Shu, in fact, applied to a whole building – both as an ideal
and a practical response to the local economic constraints – the
Chinese tradition of readapting bricks, tiles and stones left after
earthquakes or typhoons to repair damages. If, on the one hand, as
the architect explains, such practice “introduces a history in the
construction, giving to the wall an ‘overdose of time’ without having
to wait for aging”; on the other hand, it condemns the demolition of
historical districts to leave room for new developments in the new
China.
Shu uses bricks as do Louis Kahn and Eladio Dieste,
not as an “adversary that has to be overcome” but as poor, almost
anthropomorphic partners to play with.
Ningbo walls create unpredictable and differentiated
surfaces, but foremost they structure an astonishing public space
where history is showed through a daring, transitional and nomadic
experience.
Beyond the stable demarcation bounds that walls may
define, this “in-between space” behaves indeed as a frontier, that
is as a dynamic entity, a no man’s land where most cross-cultural
mixing may occur. In this way, Shu builds a fortress, which is also a
powerful, imaginary bridge between past and future.
Short extract from Wall Stories. In G. Bertelli, M. Roda (eds.)
Landscape in Sequence, Dwelling the Wall. Santarcangelo di
Romagna, Maggioli, 2013.
16
Rock ‘n’ Wall:
Designing the Absence
-Francesco Mancini
How to question the role of the urban monument in the
contemporary European city today? Challenging the generic concept
of a city as a set of fundamental structures/infrastructures might
lead to question urban identity beyond the evidence of stable
neighborhoods over time.
“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is
one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we
form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first
is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you
can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance
and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of
inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”
Italo Calvino1
Museification vs. Social Condenser
The value of the historic city of Rome, still today, is often
identified with the historic and artistic value of its monuments in a
very abstract sense, which sometimes represses the capacity of those
monuments to act as social and urban condensers, as real artifacts
that embody their important past as a contemporary condition.
A rigid interpretation of historic context suggests the
historic city as a museum of itself, one in which the historic
monument cannot be part of daily life or make a real contribution
towards the identity of the current city.
Which Wall?
In this respect, the Walls of Rome – the Aurelian Wall
of Rome, the Leonine Wall, the Vatican Wall and the Baroque
Wall offer a great opportunity to rethink the relationship between
monument and the city. Many parts of the urban landscape of Rome
have been lost or substantially transformed over the centuries,
losing their original consistency and substance. Apparently this
did not occur to the most massive boundary wall of Rome, that was
initially built by the emperor Aurelian in five years (270-275 BCE)
as a 19km long ribbon of bricks to defend the city from barbarian
17
invasions. While the older Servian wall was physically erased, the
Aurelian wall has survived over centuries after losing its defensive
function. It has become a linear tape that has registered many
historical events along its perimeter, events that are made visible
by the historic process of transformations, repairs and adaptation to
contingent urban conditions of the city.
From the Metaphor of Absence to the Project of Absence
Despite its permanence over time, the wall with its
transformations also speaks of a twofold history of the city of Rome,
both physically and metaphorically: a history of Presence - what
stayed as permanence over time - and a history of Absence – what
went lost or was never accomplished. This twofold history calls for
further investigations, if one wants to propose an alternate identity
for the wall, complementary and not mutually exclusive with its
original one and with the identity of contemporary Rome.
As a presence, the wall is undeniably there, but it is
certainly perceived more as an obstacle to the continuity of the city
than as a sign of that same continuity. As a sign of absence, the wall
can be considered from a different point of view: it embodies the
visible trace of the unaccomplished development of Rome as the
capital of the modern Italian state, since it contains the persistence
of a contradictory series of decisions that took place and, at the same
time, never happened. The most important one is wall demolition.
While Haussman in Vienna replaced the wall with the Ring, an
urban void to preserve power, in Rome, the void of real power
divides the center from the periphery, leaving the wall almost intact,
but ignoring it at the same time. Paradoxically, as if the wall was not
longer there, in over the years it was cut, perforated, supported by
artificial clamps, kept in artificial life by parasitic interventions and,
at the same time, murdered in its own essence. The wall segment
18
 at Porta Salaria is the most destroyed and the most preserved. The
wall segment at Porta Metronia is the most preserved and the most
unknown. The wall segment along the Tiber and the Janiculum hill is
the most absent and perhaps the most regretted. The wall segment at
Villa Medici and Villa Borghese is the most exhibited and the most
subdued.
From this perspective, the walls lacks any clear destiny,
as does Rome itself: the most truly terrifying future that one might
imagine. This void of meaning is the condition to change towards a
consideration of the wall once more as a single urban infrastructure,
with as many identities as its fragmentary segments. Placed in
between the historic and the contemporary city, the wall has always
been capable of absorbing memories from the past, including even
its negation as a whole. For this reason, it is now time to allow the
wall to speak about its differences and complexities, standing as a
metaphor for the identity of the multicultural contemporary city in
which it is located. The aim of such a design could consequently
focus on giving breath to the wall voice, designing the space around
it. Designing the absence.

19 20
21 22
Sites

3
2
1 1.Testaccio

This Testaccio is at the southern point of Rome where the Aurelian

wall crosses the Tiber. Here, there is a strong geographic presence
of the Tiber and the Monte dei Cocci of Testaccio. Nearby is the
Pyramid of Cestius; a tomb of a Roman general built in the style
of a Nubian Pyramid. Next to this tomb are the structures of the
industrial revolution which sprung up at the old limits of Rome. To
the south of the site is the old Italgas plant and its massive iconic
gasometer structures. Inside the Aurelian walls, and right near the
Tiber, is the old slaughterhouse of Rome; a large walled complex
built in the image of a Roman castrum city.
The Porta Metronia site is unique in that it is a straight
stretch of wall and on its eastern side, there is a large park. On this
relatively straight stretch the Aurelian wall is at it’s highest. Here,
the wall is exposed. The outer side of the wall - where the park is -
faces a large mid-rise residential neighbourhood. On the west side
villa estates butt up right against the wall.
2. Porta
The San Giovanni site is anchored by the Basilica di San
Metronia
Giovanni in Laterano, the Basilica di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme
and Porta Maggiore. Between San Giovanni and Santa Croce in
Gerusalemme there is a large paved urban park with children’s
playgrounds, dog walk areas, and cafe kiosks. Here, the inside of
the Aurelian wall, with its arcuated inner walkways, is exposed -
unlike most of the Porta Metronia site. Past Santa Croce, the wall is
intersected by an aqueduct. Then it takes a sharp ninety degree turn
towards Porta Maggiore.

3. San
Giovanni
23 24
Typologies
Architecture design studios typically function according to a
linear pedagogical method: a design problem is posed to the students,
accompanying material is taught, the students struggle with the
problem, frequently receiving feedback until they formally present
their solution, which is critiqued, and graded. That is usually it.
However, if this process were to fold back on itself, we also have the
possibility of creating a feedback loop. With a class of approximately
70 students all working on one design problem, the different
variations of their solutions is a valuable document to understanding
the original question. We have the opportunity to think of this work as
qualitative data set from which we can map patterns and extract new
conclusions.
The topic of the work done by the University of Waterloo
School of Architecture Rome program was the Aurelian wall. The
projects were spread out over three different sites in Rome; however,
all sites had the wall cutting through them. This allowed for different
environments of the wall condition to be examined. The resulting
body of work offers insight into the specific problem of building near
historic structures, the fringe conditions of a city, and generally the
very nature of walls.
We observed that four distinct typologies emerged from the
semester’s work. These were characterized by geometric relations
to the wall which differed by rotation in plan and elevation. They
are, in relation to the wall, Perpendicular, Parallel, Vertical and
Underground. Underlying these typologies are ideological positions
towards the Aurelian wall’s history, form, the local urban condition,
and the extended site of Rome.
The four projects shown in the Perpendicular strategy, are
a sample of the works which chose to cut across the wall. In these
projects, we largely see a concern with the distinction between inside
and outside the wall and the city. Often, this type is manifested in
the creation of a new break and point of passage across the wall. To
highlight this rupture, a large piece of building program was placed at
the break, which created a new object within the wall similar to other
structures originally built into the wall, like the Pyramid of Cestius,
the Amphitheatrum Castrense, and the Castrum Praetorio.
25
Projects which were less concerned with this urban
distinction between inside and outside the wall often chose the
massing strategy we call Parallel. Here, the project is characterized
by running along a portion of the wall. They are often on one side of
the wall, and do not break through the historic structure. Here we
see more veneration for the wall as a structure and piece of Rome’s
history. The linear massing of these designs means that most of
the spaces are organized in relation to the Aurelian wall and often
highlight its texture, colour, linearity and thickness.
Both the Perpendicular and Parallel typologies are very
concerned with how the architecture relates to the Aurelian wall.
The next two typologies - Vertical and Underground - are much more
focused on either the immediate or distant urban contexts.
The Underground concepts, which were the most rare
type, were almost entirely found on the San Giovanni site. Here the
environment already contained a beautiful park which students had to
contend with. The design of these projects were so concerned with the
local urban context that in some way they tried to remove themselves
from it, and therefore built underground. The forms created here
reference Rome’s history of building beneath the earth.
The contrast to the Underground strategy is the Vertical.
These projects were concerned less with the immediate context, but
rather the larger far reaching condition of Rome. Therefore, they
chose to go up in an effort to connect with it. The vertical typologies
work in two ways: as place to see the city, and as an object to be
seen. Therefore, we see lots of observation towers, and a careful
orchestration of views. Then, as an object, there is an attempt to
iconographically ground the building by nearby structures, like the
gasometers and the Pyramid of Cestius.
By bringing these projects together in this way, we hope that
a new tension will develop between the designs revealing new ideas.
26
 Perpendicular

27 28
-Alex Robinson

Rome is a city of fragments, and as such a museum

that calls itself ‘the museum of the city’, must pay homage to this
notion. In addition the Aurelian wall is itself a trace of a boundary
that separated the outside from the in, and to this day remains a
defining element that Rome has yet to incorporate into larger urban
armatures. This museum looks to break the boundary of the existing
wall with a new, more pourus wall, that acts as a transition space for
both the public and for the visitors of the museum.
Furthermore the new wall acts as a spolia wall for the
un-curated fragments of Rome, whether newly discovered artifacts
or new collections coming into the museum. The relationship
between the new spolia wall and the permanent galleries is one
of experiencing objects in a more visceral way in comparison to
experiencing objects in perspective where they are given meaning
through contemplative spaces. Thus the architecture of the two bars
are of different nature, however are both experienced in relationship
of one another so that the visitor can be given a greater investigation
into the interpretation of the city of Rome, and it’s complexity.

29 Testaccio Testaccio 30
31 Testaccio Testaccio 32
33 Testaccio Testaccio 34
-Jack Lipson
Stephane Gaulin-Brown

Museum + City is a project that seeks to examine the role

of the contemporary museum typology in a city like Rome which,
through a tourist driven economy, has effectively transformed into
a museum in itself. Can a museum be more than simply another
building which houses a collection of artifacts and remnants of the
city beyond? What if the museum was, in fact, a city?
Believing that the city is more than an ordered and rational
entity - but rather a pervasive space of incalculable experiences,
where the possibility of the improbable is heightened - we saw
our project as a point of intensity within the urban field of the
Testaccio district. The scheme is comprised of a variety of different,
often unassociated, pieces of urban program (i.e. market place,
recreation, cemetery, performance spaces)and through connecting
the surrounding areas, the Museum + City attempts to shape a more
unified urban condition.

35 Testaccio Testaccio 36
37 Testaccio Testaccio 38
39 Testaccio Testaccio 40
-Janice Woo
Rachel Kim

The site, stretching along the Aurelian Walls from the

Basilica San Giovanni Laterano to Porta Maggiore, encompasses a
variety of programmatic uses, including military, cultural, religious,
and archaeological structures. The Aurelian Walls themselves point
at two prominent axes: the Urban, toward Porta Maggiore, and the
Religious, toward the basilica. The museum organizes the site into
a series of parallel programmatic strips reflecting the diversity of
the existing buildings. One diagonal strip crosses them all, creating
a connection between the parallel strips. The four permanent
exhibitions are each housed in their own wings of the building and
are associated with a programmatic strip.

41 San Giovanni San Giovanni 42

43 San Giovanni San Giovanni 44
45 San Giovanni San Giovanni 46
-Monty de Luna
Cam Parkin

Our building is placed at the confluence of significant

transportation arteries and acts as a nexus for the activity around
the site, while the four galleries become “terminus stations” for
the paths leading to and from their respective elements of the city.
In order to accommodate the confluence of circulation, addition
of valuable public space, and a large amount of gallery space, our
scheme stratifies these elements, allowing the site circulation to
remain at ground level while the public space slopes down and
the galleries hover above, following the rigid geometries of the
adjacent slaughter houses. The ground plane is sliced in bands and
articulated to let light into the open and formative spaces below,
which contrast the enclosed and tightly curated spaces above. The
lobby acts as a gathering space where the visitor can select their
desired gallery and ascend directly to it.
The main principle of our site strategy is to evaluate areas
of the site based on which category of the city they most strongly
emulate (Nature and Landscape, History and Mythology, Forma
Urbis and Architecture, or Imago Hominis) and pair its existing
program and elements with contemporary public uses. A series of
high and low speed pedestrian and cyclist arteries connect these
added programs, along with transit hubs and public spaces.

47 Testaccio Testaccio 48
49 Testaccio Testaccio 50
51 Testaccio Testaccio 52
 eternal city

eternal wall

53 54
WALL THAT
ONLY KEPT OUT
ARCHITECTURE
– NOT the CARS,
TRAINS, BOATS
OR EVEN THE
BARBARIANS.

55 56
nature,
resident of
the wall, is
taking it down
piece by piece.

57 58
 Parallel

59 60
-Monica Lalas
Sheelah Tolton

The Museo Della Città, the Museum of the City of Rome,

is an approach to both artifact preservation and urban planning
that aims to explore a new relationship to the Tiber river. Once
the location of the Aurelian wall, the riverside at the Mattatoio di
Testaccio is currently underdeveloped relative to the rest of the
city. The remaining fragment of the wall serves as the point of
departure for a design that aims primarily to activate and increase
the permeability of the Mattatoio grounds. By using the pre-
existing conditions, the museum reintroduces the wall as a datum
for a variety of connecting public spaces, as well as the exhibits
themselves.

61 Testaccio Testaccio 62
63 Testaccio Testaccio 64
65 Testaccio Testaccio 66
-Ronald Tang
Tramira Garach

The Museo della Citta aspires to create a cultural corridor

bridging one significant religious site to another, drawing pedestrians
away from the heavily trafficked Viale Carlo Felice into a piazza that
facilitates a wide range of public activity. A series of stairs aligning
with the city grid provide access from Viale Carlo Felice into the
naturally sunken piazza, dividing the programmatic elements. To
unify the building, a linear spine of service areas is arranged behind
the stairs separating public areas from research and more intimate
exhibition spaces. The roof’s tiers are both anchored by and depart
from the roof of this spine, and the resulting form gives a park back
to the public while bringing light into the Museo below.

67 San Giovanni San Giovanni 68

69 San Giovanni San Giovanni 70
71 San Giovanni San Giovanni 72
-Tony Shi

A ‘Museum for the City’ SATYRICON is to serve as a new

addition to the way architecture merges with history and culture in
the Eternal City. While the design brief called for a monumental
archive that housed artifacts ranging from Image of Man, History and
Mythology, to Nature and Landscape, and Urban Form, the project
also seeks to represent itself as a commemoration to its violent
history.
Rome, a city born from blood and violence, now serves as
one of the biggest open air museums in the world. Inspired by the
themes behind Percey Shelley’s sonnet ‘Ozymandias’, the project
serves as the conclusion of the hubris of great men and the ruins that
remain after their rule. While the sonnet invokes the potent nature
of the ravaging of time and the impermanency of empires, the project
aims to expand on the last notion: that of the reclamation of nature
upon the ruins of man.

73 Porta Metronia Porta Metronia 74

75 Porta Metronia Porta Metronia 76
77 Porta Metronia Porta Metronia 78
Richard Serra:
a connoisseur
of walls.

79 80
Be like a
Walk like
wall
a wall
Make love
like a wall
Make art
like a wall
Talk like
a wall

Raise your kids

like a wall
81 82
 concept for the concept for the
wall 1 wall 2

83 84
 Underground

85 86
-Jennifer Yong
Emily Guo

In Rome, an excavated city of simultaneous, there is

constantly a life that exists between what is above and below the
ground. The placement of a museum on this site, a beautifully
serene but underused neighborhood park along the Aurelian Wall,
require a great sensitivity to the ground plane. The characteristics
of the Forma Urbis, Imago Hominis, History and Myth, and Nature
and Landscape in each era of Rome’s history are used to organize a
linear movement through the exhibits, which are grouped by similar
architectural qualities. These exhibits and additional program sit
in and on the landscape to form a dialogue with the public park
redesigned along the site.

87 Porta Metronia Porta Metronia 88

89 Porta Metronia Porta Metronia 90
91 Porta Metronia Porta Metronia 92
“If we do not
fill in all
the gaps,...
this loss will
generate
additional
meaning.” Source: Tramira Garach, Monty de Luna, Patrick Verkley, Galen Jones

-Slavoj Zizek
93 94
fence:
small or
impermanent
wall

95 96
 Vertical

97 98
-Liwei Wang
Michelle Piotrowski

The museum consists of two parts (an “object” building and

an “infill” building) that sit at the intersection of two axes created by
the master plan.
The concept for the “infill” building is a collection of
“objects” underneath a traversable roof plane. The building is
slightly sunken, and captures a portion of the Aurelian Wall, which
shapes a primary circulation path. This building contains the
permanent exhibitions for the museum.
The “object” building is a tower that houses the library,
archives, offices, auditorium, and temporary exhibition spaces across
nine levels. The arrangement of programmatic volumes in space can
be read in both plan and section.

99 Testaccio Testaccio 100

101 Testaccio Testaccio 102
103 Testaccio Testaccio 104
-Sam Willman
Tristan Robertson

Our museum tells Rome in two architectures, the subjective

and objective. The subjective podium is embedded in the city,
you live in, over and around a form which draws it’s lines from the
immediate urban fabric. It carves into a granite base creating a
plane that defines open and closed programs while a steel structure
paves a public roof-scape which connects it’s two access points. The
objective exhibition space takes it’s distance as a pure rectilinear
object hovering over the city, aligned with it’s walls. Within this
object the symmetrical plan paints a picture of equality between
artistic and scientific analysis of Rome. Isolated experiences of
these types of knowledge are punctuated with views over the present
moment of Rome, and along the spine of the wall you are able to
experience these views against the two abstractions.

105 Testaccio Testaccio 106

107 Testaccio Testaccio 108
109 Testaccio Testaccio 110
-Mona Dai
Cynthia Eng

We propose a museum that celebrates Rome as a city of

constant collisions. The building occupies the current dead-end
of Via Foro Boario, at the intersection of the Aurelian wall and
the railway. Between these two infrastructures (one ancient, one
new) and the permanent exhibitions aligned with them, we propose
a loud, constantly changing public space. At the summit of this
space, separated from the chaos at ground level, visitors are invited
to survey the context. Thus the collisions between nature and built
form, history and contemporary needs, which have shaped Rome,
will be revealed.

111 Testaccio Testaccio 112

113 Testaccio Testaccio 114
115 Testaccio Testaccio 116
-Jeremy Jong
Tonks Chen

The Museo della Citta’ presents a significant opportunity

to revitalize an under-utilized corner of Testaccio. The context of the
Aurelian Walls is redefined with a greater pedestrian focus as well as
a focus on the excavation of the walls to their complete height. The
museum acts as a bookend on the southern portions of the wall, and
further acts as a landmark providing context to a fragmented space.
Within the museum, a singular path takes visitors on a journey
through landscape, mythology and the image of humanity before
arriving in the urban form. There, the view of the city presents Rome
as the transcendental form, rising above all below it.

117 Testaccio Testaccio 118

119 Testaccio Testaccio 120
121 Testaccio Testaccio 122
If the Aurelian
wall, or any
monument,
were a person,
could you fall
in love with
them?

123 124
“I say; regard the
foundation terrace
and examine the
masonry: is it not
burnt brick and
good? The seven
sages laid the
foundations.”

- Epic of gilgamesh

125 126
Walls beget
more walls

127 128
 The concept of grafting is certainly peculiar and
interesting, specifically within an architectural discourse.
Grafting indicates the insertion of something into something
else, a sort of new life that is given to an existing entity, both
animated or unanimated.
In a country like Italy and specifically in Rome,
there are so many layers of inhabitation, construction and uses
Grafting House that have been created over the centuries; the contemporary
architectural design is never an intervention within a tabula
rasa, but is rather the addition of another layer or the
consequence of an act of grafting into the existing.
Cino Zucchi, the curator of the Italian Pavilion at the
2014 Venice Biennale states:

The Italian Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Biennale is based on
a simple concept: the observation of a country in which each new project
has to come to terms with such an urbanised territory, such a stratified
use of the city, that is almost impossible to conceive a building as an
autonomous object. While the Functionalism of the last century sought a
“degree zero” and the security of an elementary lexicon in its anxiety to
re-invent a new order, contemporary thinking seeks new goals and values
through a metamorphosis of existing structures.

129 130
-Alex Willms

GLAZING

AXONOMETRIC
1:250 VERTICAL PLANES

WALL STUDIO | ALEX WILLMS

HORIZONTAL PLANES

AURELIAN WALL BUILDING ELEMENTS

NOT TO SCALE 1:250

WALL STUDIO | ALEX WILLMS

WALL STUDIO | ALEX WILLMS

131 132
 -Stephane Gaulin-Brown

1:100 133 134

-Cam Parkin

Existing Condition

Alignment of Original and New Colonnade Existing Condition

GR
J C PAR

Located i
project is
public and
In the sep
semipriva
Structure
wall’s corr
Varying Densities of Panels from 50% to 90% Alignment of Original and New Colonnade Existing Condition
public pro
walkway f
wrap arou
privacy. W
wall on th
hopes to
of the wal
travelers a

Varying Densities of Panels from 50% to 90% Alignment of Original and New Colonnade

Studio Access Axo 1:100 Studio Courtyard Axo 1:100

Residence Axo 1:100

Varying Densities of Panels from 50% to 90%

Section Through Promenades

Full Axo 1:200

135 136
-Jack Lipson

137 138
-Liwei Wang
One enters the house from the south
side off Viale di Porta Ardeatina. An
2F unassuming three-storey staircase leadss
to a pre--existing arch near the top of the
Sleeping Area
watchtower. Through the arch, with a
Sunken Terrace
gap on either side, is the main entrance
of the house.

The entrance sits at a half level from

which both the first and second floor
can be accessed. The first floor contains
the kitchen, bathroom and a small live/
work space. The horologist’s desk can
be stored underneath the walkway when
not in use.

The second floor is the sleeping area,

and a small bed takes advantage of
the northeast corner. Above the bed is
1+1.5F a small storage space which doubles as
Entrance a crawlspace through which the sunken
Live/Work roof terrace can be accessed.
Kitchen
Bathroom The roof terrace, sunken a half level
below the roof line, provides a small
exterior space and helps bring light into
the introverted house.

The south side of the house is glazed,

revealing the texture of the wall through
filtered light from the top.

Lastly, all interventions on site do not

touch the existing walls, but is offset
from them with a small gap. In addition,
GF the structure of the house (on the interior
Structure side of the walls) and the structure of
the staircase (on the exterior side) are
independent of each other. The ground
floor is left in its original found condition.
It is the underbelly of the house, but no
entrance can be found there.

PLANS [1:100]

CUBE HOUSE
HOUSE FOR A HOROLOGIST

LIWEI WANG Cube

PARTI DIAGRAM 20367140 Paolo
horolo
ARCH492 concr
the Au

On a
Aureli
to its
gate.
The c
ancie
Contained within the 5x5x5m cube is a void
space in the center (as shown by the grey cube
above). The void is 2.5x2.5x2.5m, or exactly half
of each dimension of the house. All the functions
of the house wrap around this void. Essentially,
the program around the void becomes a sort of
wall - a secondary enclosure. Thus, Horology
House, combined with the existing Aurelian
Walls, is conceived as a series of enclosures
nested within each other.
SOUTH ELEVATION [1:100]
Since all of the circulation and functions of the
house are pushed to an outer “wall”, the daily
path of the horologist is rendered in revolutions
around the central void. He moves in a fashion
similar to the hands of a clock. The interlocking
functions and the small size of the house can
also be likened to the intricate mechanisms of a
timepiece.
AXONOMETRIC EXTERIOR PERSPECTIVE SITE P

139 140
 Alex Willms, Alexander Robinson,
Andjela Tatarovic, Andrew Lord,
Andrew Cole, Anne Sewell, Bryce
Clayton, Carly Kandrack, Charles
Ye, Christina Robev, Cynthia Eng,
Danielle Rosen, Danika Irvine,
Elizabeth Laing, Emily Guo, Evan
Borochovitz, Eveline Lam, Evelyn
In 1979 the University of Waterloo School of Architecture Hofmann, Galen Jones, Giles Hall,
inaugurated its Rome Program for fourth year students. The program
has provided over seven hundred Canadian architecture students with
Tony Shi, Haneen Dalla-Ali, Haylie
an opportunity to live and study in the eternal city, arguably the richest Chan, Jack Lipson, Jacqueline Janice
architectural environment on earth.
The profound influence of the Rome experience is reflected
Chow, Cam Parkin, Jamie Banks, Janice
in the work of all the past participants. Students and graduates have Woo, Jennifer Yong, Jeremy Jeong,
consistently referred to it as the most influential experience in their Jiyeon Kim, Joel Piecowye, Justin Lai,
educational careers. There is no place in the world that can bring alive
the essence and intensity of the past better than Rome.
Katherine Holbrook-Smith, Keturah
From the foundation of the Rome Program, the University of Breckon, Kristin Allison, Lea Koch,
Waterloo has played an architectural role in the Italian capital. The Liwei Wang, Lia Tramontini, Louis-
program has involved Italian academics and practitioners, created
links with Italian and foreign institutions and, widely exhibited and
Pierre Belec, Mario Arnone, Maryia
published the work of faculty and students. Sakharevich, Michelle Duong,
The work produced in the Design Studio has always Michelle Piotrowski, Mona Dai,
participated to the architectural and cultural debate within the city, by
trying to offer solutions and projects from a perspective that is distant Monica Lalas, Montgomery De Luna,
and yet attentive to the historical and archaeological nature of the city Natalie Karin Bellefleur, Paniz
of Rome. Moayeri, Patrick Verkley, Pavel
Tsolov, Ronald Tang, Emily Li, Safira
Lakhani, Sam Vickars, Samantha
Willman, Sheelah Tolton, Sheng
Wu, Shu Pui Lui, Sneha Sumanth,
Stephane Gaulin-Brown, Tamara
Paolatto, Trimira Garach, Tristan
Roberton, Victor Cocuz, Victor Poon,
Wade Brown, Yue Qiu, Yunyue Chen