rome architecture festival transforms the eternal city
For the fourth edition of the Rome Architecture Festival, four international firms have been asked to design site-specific temporary pavilions transform the public spaces of the Eternal City. The festival, designed and produced by the Order of Architects of Rome and Province, serves as a vehicle and accelerator of change, with the aim of fostering a renewed culture of design and having a greater social impact on Rome. Focusing on the issues that govern the urban, social and cultural transformations of contemporary metropolises, the interventions of TAKKLemonot, SET Architects and Anna Merci Architecture deal with the residual spaces of daily life in Rome. Their pavilionsas well as the wider festival, generate concrete changes from ordinary landscapes – “reserve” public spaces in areas devoid of living infrastructure.
The OO Pavilion – by Anna Merci Architecture for the Rome Architecture Festival | image © Anna Merci Architecture
Shelter for Coexistence by TAKK
Spanish architecture workshop TAKK’s installation Shelter for Co-Existence signals the urgency of redefining public space not only as a priority to meet human needs, but also for other forms of life that coexist and inhabit the city. The installation, a fur-covered dome with multiple protected entrances to shelter the neighborhood catsaims to establish relationships of mutualism, symbiosis and affection between humans, non-humans and their city.
Italy is home to the most diverse number of species in Europe, but around 70% of its fauna is threatened with extinction due to global warming. This situation is only worsening in the country’s urban areas due to the scarcity of green space and the heat island effect.
Shelter for Co-Existence – by TAKK for the Rome Architecture Festival | image © Jose Hevia
Oasi dei golosi by Lemonot
Oasi dei Golosi de Lemonot, international architecture and performing arts workshop, is designed as a large habitable object, a metallic urban oasis on a city scale. The pavilion is designed as a reflective and permeable island that emerges from the industrial elements of the district, playing with shadows and the shapes of light. Seven cones serving as telescopes surround a metal skeleton and intersect to form a circular drum, framing a sheltered space where visitors can linger, sit and enjoy a picnic.
Oasi dei golosi – by Lemonot for the Rome Architecture Festival | image © Lemonot
Skyframe by SET Architects
Roman workshop SET Architects designs Skyframe is an urban device that regenerates and activates a marginal area of the Ostiense district to increase its accessibility for citizens. The installation is designed as an urban landmark, permeable and habitable, capable of encouraging visitors to discover new ways of using public space.
through four in wood portals, visitors can enter an intimate, compressed space that invites them to look up and admire the sky, framed by a perspective telescope. In a contrast of natural and man-made materials, the upper telescoping section of the XLam structure is clad in rockpanel slabs that reflect the cityscape.
Skyframe – by SET Architects for the Rome Architecture Festival | image © Simone Bossi
OO Pavilion by Anna Merci Architecture
The OO — Observatory of Ostiense — Pavilion of Anna Merci Architecture (see more here) is located in front of the abandoned area of the old Mercati Generali. Exploring the urban landscape according to the principle of the periscope, the device overcomes physical barriers and offers new visual perspectives. With its archetypal form and its intense color, it holds the attention and becomes the occasion of an original reflection on the spaces of the contemporary city.
The OO pavilion is accessed through a folded sheet metal gate that recalls the arch of the historic entrance to the Mercati Generali and the shape of the rhythmic windows of the two buildings facing it. The load-bearing facility, built dry, is made entirely of hollow steel rods arranged in three circular modules bolted together. The step of the rods decreases upwards, combining formal and structural requirements. The raw construction materials are reinterpreted in an aesthetic expression: in addition to the rods, the three periscopes are made of threaded rods, bolts and mirrors inserted into the rings that normally support the PVC pipes. The cadence of the rods vibrates to the rhythm of the facades of the residential buildings that surround the pavilion. 8.9 meters high and partially permeable in shape, the strong and light structure merges with the landscape and the sky in varying degrees of transparency depending on how it is hit by the sun’s rays. The orange color recalls the plaster residues left on the buildings of the former Mercati Generali and recalls the many murals that enliven the Ostiense district.
The OO Pavilion – by Anna Merci Architecture for the Rome Architecture Festival | image © Anna Merci Architecture
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