Bartlett International Lecture Series: 2012-13 // Luca Galofaro | IaN+

Rome as a model

Rome is the laboratory for testing our ideas, but at the same time it is also the place where these ideas have gradually matured. To read Rome means first of all to comprehend the stratification of a system of issues that, over time and in different ways, have influenced its development and its slow evolution.

Its boundaries are constantly shifting, its 'monument condition' widens its dimension, the extent of its voids built or un-built, the natural landscape; the political and religious power make it always different but force it to always be the same ever. Rome must be read as a complex project closely related to time; in order to comprehend it it's important to interpret this time, to recognize the changes that every architect could and should turn into work patterns, into a model.

When considered in this way these models, considered in their variety, become so important in the design process because, once identified, they turn into opportunities for discussion and reflection: real investigation and experimentation tools representing an ideal form of thought, an intellectual structure defining the goals of a creative activity.

To create a model means to find consistency between certain fixed combinations and positions. Usually we do it with two models, the visual and the intellectual models, used as conceptual tools to structure our experience and translate them into functions or make intentional. Through these two models we can express an objective structure that translates the events into something more secure and therefore more real. It is nothing but a formal principle that makes it possible to visualize the complexity of all the potential facets in a more systematic way, a creative approach set up on the understanding of a model.

Rome is a model for everything representing its connection to history, its resistance to contemporary, its ability to grow through the stratification of ideas, urban fabrics and architectures. Rome is a model for its instability repeated over time.

Find out more about this lecture on The Bartlett website at https://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/events/bartlett-international-lectures-luca-galafaro

This lecture was recorded as part of the 2012-13 season of The Bartlett International Lecture Series at UCL on 13 February 2013.

Видео Bartlett International Lecture Series: 2012-13 // Luca Galofaro | IaN+ канала The Bartlett, UCL Faculty of the Built Environment