Off-Center On-Line
Twelve architects were invited to revisit the task of Roma Interrotta, this time focusing on interventions in Rome’s expansive suburbs. This installation identifies the opportunity to connect marginalized immigrant suburban communities with a high speed monorail that loops around and across the Ring Road (GRA).
Rome's GRA offers the closest suburban parallel to Nolli's notion of continuous public space. Here, it is re-imagined as a freed datum. Cutting around concentrations of urbanization that hang from the 68.2 kilometers of road, the freeway unfurls into a straight line that refigures and reorders its context.
If unfurling the suburbs sets in motion a non hierarchical line of thinking that focuses on the suburban condition, pinning Rome back together generates unexpected points of confluence on both sides of the GRA. Looping these points generates a freewheeling line to link disinvested communities with neglected countryside, antiquities and malls. It begs a more compelling means of connection than the sponsoring freeway.
Casual juxtapositions create exquisite countryside scenes—rail lines run by fabled aqueducts and signboards streak across stands of stone pines. The countryside is a breathtaking resource that is hardly recognized or used. At the same time open space is fast ceding to development and it is obvious that its revived appreciation is essential to arrest the trend - underutilized real estate within already urbanized places is plentiful which should mean that countryside can remain just that.
STATUS
Completed 2008
LOCATION
Venice, Italy
CLIENT
La Biennale Di Venezia
PROGRAM
Sound and Video Installation, "Uneternal Rome" Exhibition Curator: Aaron Betsky