Piranesi Prix de Rome XVII
International Architecture for Archeology Competition August 2019 - September 2019
1st Prize Winner
team:
Simone Baccaglini, Alessandro Coccioni, Francesco Maria Fratini, Elisabetta Tossut, Maria Veronica Vigoriti
Villa Adriana is one of the most extraordinary archeological realities in the world. A Unesco World Heritage Site since 1999, it is a high point in the cultural offerings present on Italian soil. Coming down to us with its monumental consistency still very present and visible, the Villa designed by the Emperor Hadrian has been an object of study, of visitation, and of admiration for at least a half- millennium. Its architectonic composition, even before its ruin, is still a debated and open issue. Its architecture is a unique example in the ancient world and, since its edification, has exhibited a skeleton that is typically Roman associated with a totally new, if not revolutionary, spirit which in any case is far from that of the mos maiorum. It was something new then, asit is today for those who for the first time try to readits plan and understand the presence or absence of an ordering principle; the lex that reveals the ratio. Our design experiment will therefore be concentrated on two elements that make up the image of VillaAdriana: Architecture and water, understood in a close relation of complementarity, which not only originated some key architectural episodes of the villa, but which is at the heart of the choice of the site on which it is constructed, in addition to the positioning syntax of its pavilions.
The project involves the construction of a thermal complex near the Villa Adriana’s Pecile Wall. The comparison with the Wall is outlined as an axiom around which to develop the entire project. The compositional genesis sees some reflections. The first, without any doubt, refers to the principle that agglomerates the various “pavilions” that make up the Villa. [Tractatus - Pier Federico Caliari]. Trying to combine this theory with generating axes that see the Pecile wall at the centre of the reasoning, we have recreated a new remarkable point, from which the entire compositional process starts. A second reflection sees the reinterpretation of the spaces of Villa Adriana, a reinterpretation of the apparent Chaos, searching an Order. The different orientation of the various “pavilions” generates a series of interstitial spaces that assume the role of voids with the function of passage.
The project is based on a reinterpretation of these spatial sequences, recreating different alignments between the various thermal pavilions that highlight interstitial spaces that act as passages from one pavilion to another. The choice to remain mainly underground is due to the desire not to interfere with the image of the Pecile Wall, which must remain the undisputed protagonist. The underground spaces, however, culminate on the surface with a series of architectural occasions (septa, tanks, fountains) that become the backdrop for a permanent exposure on the surface.
