Magic in the Moonlight: Rome at Night

In the transition from November to December, Rome became a magical place, filled with Christmas lights twinkling against the night sky. While completing my studio projects, I often found myself getting very tired just after sunset, and the best way to combat the drowsiness is to go out into the night and get some fresh air. For each of these outings, I took my camera and explored a different area of the city at night. There really isn't a lot more to say than that, so I guess this blog post is really going to be more of a photo montage.

So please enjoy the wonderful world of Rome at night through my camera lens.

Piazza Navona

Piazza Navona

Outside the Pantheon

Inside the Pantheon

Castel Sant'Angelo

St. Peter's Basilica

St. Peter's Basilica

St. Peter's Square

Along the Janiculum

Along the Janiculum

St. Peter's from the Janiculum

Along the Janiculum

Capitoline Hill

The Roman Forum

The House of the Vestels

The Colosseum

The Colosseum

You all know this one! Along the Tiber River

Victor Emmanuel Monument

Piazza del Popolo

There are few things more magical to see than a city at night. In the moonlight, and under the streetlights, the colours of the city blend into one. All one can see is the form of the buildings working together as one city, one place, one sense of being.  No matter what the city, you must always try to view it at night, to see the magic behind its form!

Ciao for now!

October in Rome: Part 2

At the end of our brief but amazing course with Rick, we celebrated Thanksgiving as a class. What an undertaking! We ordered 5 large turkeys, and it fell to member of the class who had an oven to cook them (luckily, my roommates and I only have a stove, so we were saved this stress). Everyone else had to bring a side dish. We made mashed potatoes and quinoa salad, both of which were delicious and disappeared before seconds were served! Eating dinner with our whole class (all 60 of us) squeezed into our lecture hall was quite an experience! Nobody could get up unless everyone got up, and no one could sit down until everyone was ready to sit down. It was very amusing.

We also had some lovely entertainment at our dinner. Some of my classmates rediscovered some never before heard scenes from our 2011 play Ilion. At the time, one of the guys writing the play had this incredible dry sense of humor, and could turn any sentence into a punch line, simply with how he delivered it. Although he is no longer in our class, some of the other writers did their best to read the scenes he wrote with the same delivery with which they was intended. The whole spectacle brought back wonderful memories of acting in the play, and the camaraderie it brought us. Not to mention it was so funny, they couldn't even finish reading the scenes, because of the uncontrollable laughter echoing off the walls.

And then, it was time to focus on the next project before the class field trip to the north of Italy. Like the first project, this one was located in the Via dis Fiori Imperiale and Colosseum area of the city. We were tasked with designing a new master plan for the area which proved to be quite a challenge! I've never been very astute at site planning, and really had to work in order to come up with something to present for this project.

I planned to redistribute the site into three different rings, a vehicular traffic ring, a park/green space ring, and a pure pedestrian ring primarily for the tourists. I imagined the park space a being a space of mediation between the city and the tourists. A place where the two worlds of Rome could meet in a relaxing environment. This area was designed on the principles of Socrates "Allegory of the Cave". This story tells us of prisoners who were held in a cave, and shown only the shadows of objects their whole lives. When one prisoner is released and begins to see the objects that once cast the shadows in their entirety, he cannot comprehend what they are. Through exposure he learns that the objects and their shadows are one in the same. I reinterpreted this story into a series of winding paths leading throughout the site, guiding people to the Roman Forum. Throughout the paths there would be small fractions of objects found throughout the Forum dispersed among the paths and trees. These would be the shadows for the visitors. Once in the forum, the people would be able to see these objects still in use on the ancient buildings that remain standing there.

I also designed a preliminary idea of my final project, a Museum of the Fora. I envisioned a building that floats over the site, using light and darkness as a means guiding people through the museum.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the first panel with the hand sketches I did, but I will do when I get them back... If I get them back. I'm not entirely sure if we do or not.

Ciao for now!

October in Rome: Part 1

October was a very busy month! As a class, we were all over the city all the time! For our Rome and the Campagna class we had 6 onsite lectures in the first two weeks of the month before Thanksgiving. The first of these was the mother load. Rick's famous lecture in the Roman Forum. 

From the time the Forum opened, until the time they found us hiding in a back corner and kicked us out, that man spoke. He told wonderful stories about the history of Rome and the importance of the space in which we were learning. He taught us that all tour guides lie, and what Roman life was like. He transported us for the land of the living, to the realm of the mythical and historic simply with his words. The experience was incredible, although it would have been slightly more enjoyable if it hadn't been so hot, with so little shade! Having spoken to people who had taken this class before, I knew that my most important tool for the day would be an umbrella, and boy was I right. At first, I probably looked silly sitting under an umbrella in the sun, but then my friend joined me, and then we were a group of 60 people, huddled under umbrellas without a cloud in the sky! 

Column of Focus

Temple of Castor and Pollux

Basilica of Constantine and Maxentius

The next two days of lectures were held at the Colosseum and San Clemente, and at the remains of Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli. The Colosseum lecture was far too crowded! I heard almost none of it, because I had to stand far away from the professor, and he was trying not to disturb other people that were there. But the Colosseum itself is definitely worth a visit! It's very rare that you get to go and see somewhere with that much history. Unless you go to the next place on our list, San Clemente. San Clemente is a church, built on top of another church, built on top of the roman remains of a cult building and the Roman Mint. It is so interesting because you can actually walk through the levels and experience each one, walking through it and knowing that each was once at ground level. Amazing. Finally, we went to see the remains of Hadiran's Villa. Wow. How one man could have conceived of that, I don't know. He experimented with architectural themes no one had ever seen before. And it wasn't until years later that many of them would ever be seen again. This Villa is home to the famous Maritime theatre. It's purpose it unknown, and it isn't actually a theatre, but it was a wonderful space to sit and learn from our prof.

The Colosseum

San Clemente Bottom Church

View from the top of Hadrian's Villa

The Maritime Theatre

The next, and final three lectures, were held at the Trajan Markets, the Baths of Caracalla, and the Pantheon. Trajan's Markets were built as a part of Trajan's forum. To build this forum, they took out part of the hill, making it necessary to build something to hold up what was left of the hill, and hence, Trajan's Market was born! Next, we went to the Baths of Caracalla. I can't remember if these were the largest or second largest public bath complex built within the Roman Empire, but either way, the ruins were gigantic! These ruins were commissioned by Septamus Severus, during his reign as Roman Emperor. At the height of their use, the baths could house thousands of people. There were separate baths for men and women, as well as separate change rooms and running tracks. I don't know about you, but communal bathing doesn't really appeal to me... Finally, we ended our course with a lecture at the Pantheon. This lecture was by far the best one of the course. Hearing it really connected us with the building, and its importance in history. We also learned of the importance of the building to our professor and his family. The lecture really transcended the class through time and space, taking us to each time period of importance connected with the Pantheon. By far, the Rantheon is my favourite place in Rome, I have since been back many times, and anticipate going there again before I leave the city.

Trajan's Market

Trajan's Market

Baths of Caracalla

The Pantheon

Pantheon Dome

The Pantheon's Original Second Tier

The Pantheon Entrance

This is a very long post, and I am only halfway through the month.... I think I will end this here and continue October in the next post.

Ciao for now!

September in Rome

Today is November 8. I have been in Italy for 80 days. Today is my father's birthday. I have a scholarship application to complete for my Master's. My current studio project needs a lot of work. And I have decided now is an excellent time to write a long overdue post about September in Rome. 

September is a wonderful season in Italy. It has all the best aspects of Canadian summer, with none of the humidity! From my many walks around the city in the early parts of the term, I ended up with a really nice farmer's tan on my arms and glasses tan on my face! 

Throughout the month of September we had a very interesting project to complete for studio. The class was tasked with designing a thematic pavilion within the area of the Colosseum and Roman forum. I choose to design a "White Box", which meant I was designing a room meant for exhibiting objects. I chose to locate the pavilion right next to one of the entrances to the forum, using the forum itself as the object I was displaying.

I designed an interior pathway, with a series of walls, framing and explaining specific views of the Forum, isolating individual objects so as to give people an understanding of them on their own, before entering the forum and understanding them as a collective.

These are the completed panels for the project:

The experience of creating this project was great, because I got to spend several days exploring the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Capitoline Hill, and Palatine Hill areas of Rome. I gained some amazing insights into the use of historical spaces as tourist destinations, and was given some inspiration for the next project on recreating the strategic plan for the whole area surrounding the Colosseum.

Ciao for now!