This blog will be all about my trip to the museum, the museum of Rome that is. Sure, Rome has museums, but what about Rome as an artifact? An urban artifcact in fact, accoriding to Rossi. Rossi views Rome as an urban artifact where the history characterizes the city. He sees the city as a man-made object of engineering and architecture. But Rome LIVES! BREATHES! ENDURES! Tell me how many other museums can do all that, while continuing to be an open history book about the oldest city in the world.
I want to experience Rossi's Urban Artifact and Urban Image. An artifact is used, changed, changed due to imperfection and needs of new function. An image shows human condition, architecture, history, precedents and labor. Rome is this man made object, but a real life Frankenstein. Pieces taken from the Etruscans, the Empire, Fascism, industrialism added together in one place; then add a little religious upheaval, Grand Tours, decline and wars; finally, you are left with a living history. So much has changed in the world of architecture, but Rome is the only city where classical can still live today (Camillo Boito).
Cities and their landscapes are reshaped every few decades because they do not want to get left behind. Things that get left behind are photographed, cataloged, and put into a museum. Rome has a continuous law that the facades, the overall face and image of the city, of buildings are not allowed to change. So as Gehry, Hadid, FLW, Corb, Eisenmann, Ingles, and countless others change cities into modern pieces of art, why has Rome not been lost in the back of my history book? The architecture hasn't changed for hundreds of years, and Italy is not the only country to have moved past Fascism. Rome survives because it is a living museum, it is still teaching us new things every day. This will be my story of living in a museum for 7 weeks...
I want to experience Rossi's Urban Artifact and Urban Image. An artifact is used, changed, changed due to imperfection and needs of new function. An image shows human condition, architecture, history, precedents and labor. Rome is this man made object, but a real life Frankenstein. Pieces taken from the Etruscans, the Empire, Fascism, industrialism added together in one place; then add a little religious upheaval, Grand Tours, decline and wars; finally, you are left with a living history. So much has changed in the world of architecture, but Rome is the only city where classical can still live today (Camillo Boito).
Cities and their landscapes are reshaped every few decades because they do not want to get left behind. Things that get left behind are photographed, cataloged, and put into a museum. Rome has a continuous law that the facades, the overall face and image of the city, of buildings are not allowed to change. So as Gehry, Hadid, FLW, Corb, Eisenmann, Ingles, and countless others change cities into modern pieces of art, why has Rome not been lost in the back of my history book? The architecture hasn't changed for hundreds of years, and Italy is not the only country to have moved past Fascism. Rome survives because it is a living museum, it is still teaching us new things every day. This will be my story of living in a museum for 7 weeks...