Advanced Design Studio, Lynn

THE THIRD ARM: FAÇADE STUDIO IN ROME

The studio will focus on the design of façades; in this particular case a two sided building. Contemporary architecture has robust examples of elevations using transparency, structural expressionism and complex layered curtain walls. None of these devices will be permitted in this studio. Each student will begin the studio and their design project with the design of a vertical surface that is opaque. The only method for expressing the interior volume and circulation of the building will be through what Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky described as ‘phenomenal’ and not ‘literal’ transparency. Fenestration, apertures and other openings are not only permitted but encouraged, however curtain wall grids and translucent facades will be forbidden.

For the last decade architects have used digital medium of surface modeling tools primarily for the design of sloped, curved and topological floors. In this studio we will focus on the surface of building façades with some attention to the design of a large single volume and its walls and ceiling as it relates to the façade. The contemporary language of surface modeling from the fields of automobile, yacht, aerospace and industrial design will be given an equal value as the architectural context for the project.

The site and program for the studio will be a contemporary solution to the 1657 urban design proposal of Bernini for the Piazza San Pietro. Despite its scale and due to the expansive depth of the building, the duomo was not visible from the piazza. Much like Alberti’s Sant’ Andrea in Mantua, the ambition was to conceal the dome, yet unlike Alberti’s design of a superimposed façade that precludes and represents the volume and mass beyond, Bernini masked the duomo’s appearance on approach to the oval forecourt by projecting an opaque screen into the city as a ‘terzio braccio’ or ‘third arm’. Mussolini’s axial development of Via della Conciliazone (for the design of which he consulted with gothic campus architect Ralph Adams Cram who encouraged Mussolini to build horizontal towers instead of a vertical tower) compounded the un-built solution to the problem Bernini perceived with the visibility of the duomo from distant frontal approach. The present situation with an allée of Mussolini era blocks leading to the church can be improved by returning to Bernini’s original urban vision with a contemporary design sensibility.

The use and functions of the building will speculated on by each student individually.