ROME: The history of stitching : October 2014

Tuesday 28 October 2014

DAY 11: City out of pieces

12.07.2014

Near the house of Cola di Rienzo, on the other side of the invisible line drawn during Mussolini to mark the area of medieval Rome to be demolished, stands in its grotesque glory Church San Nicola di Carcere.

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About me in Rome

I have been awarded Nicholas Boas Scholarship and I spent July 2014 at the British School at Rome. As unbelievable as it may sound, I have never been to this architectural Mecca and as a recent diploma graduate from the Architectural Association I come with a clear agenda. At least that is what I thought I had. Rome has in many ways surprised me. The agenda is not as clear and I will not share my research abstract yet. This diary will over time capture and help me define the aspect of Rome’s architecture that I am interested in.

The working title is “The history of stitching”. Historical remains and their urban conditions are the starting point. The first task in exploration of transformative nature of Roman architecture is drawing boundaries between archaeological sites, monuments, architecture and city. This will lead to, on one hand, definition of dead sites, dead architectures, dead city and on the other hand “stitching” techniques through which architecture and elements of the city have survived. This survival is what makes Rome city despite of its numerous “black holes” and scaffolding. The project aims to disclose the city behind its “tombstones” - an X-ray of the aggregated historical fabric of Rome which suggests a strange network of social and physical relationships.