The Architecture of Geography: Istanbul, Mixed-Use Development, and the Panoramic Condition
GSD 1504, Fall 2007

The aim of the studio is to explore the urban and architectural potentials of mixed use development as it attains exponentially larger sizes and costs. Both the theoretical projections about scale (theories of bigness, of compactness, etc.) and the corporate models which have been adopted for such large scale developments in the past ten years (e.g. Emirates Towers in Dubai, Petronas Center in Kuala Lumpur) have proven inadequate in face of this new scale development and its potentials. Even the expressive or iconic aspects of these developments (two towers on a base, corporate identity suppressing the expression of mixture) have begun to show signs of fatigue. The studio focuses specifically on the geographic dimension of this new scale of development, the ability of urban architecture to reshape its larger context in a positive way.

The setting of Istanbul is particularly important for this exploration. The arrival of a new scale of mixed use development into the city of Istanbul in the 1990s has shifted its business center to the northern areas of Maslak and Etiler and created new habits of working and living, further aggravating its traffic problems, and most importantly, radically transforming its historically protected skyline. The heavy bases disrupt the fabric of the city and block visibility and the tall towers they support challenge the horizontal geography of the city's panorama. The studio explores the formal potentials of this horizontal geography as it manifests itself in two ways, one programmatic, and one visual.

Horizontal Istanbul:

There is no city that displays as much face as Istanbul. Panoramas unfold as frequently from the tops of its many hills as from its dense streets and public squares. This condition of heightened visibility is made possible by the city's amazing geographic location along the Bosphorus between the European and Asia sides, and between the Marmara and Black Seas. Because of the constant need to cross the Bosphorus whether by ferry or by car, the citizens of Istanbul enjoy these open vistas on a daily basis despite the serious traffic problems that result from this constant crossing. This condition has been sung, painted, architecturally punctuated, and admired by a succession of civilizations that have inhabited and shaped this city to the point where city's cultural diversity and historical wealth are frequently explained and represented through this horizontality.

In the past fifty years however, and as the number of the city's inhabitants has grown from about 1 million to 15 million, the urban growth has extended both inland beyond the connection to the water and to the views threatening the continuity of the panoramic logic of the city. Recent master plans have been emphasizing the preservation of the city's skyline and its unique horizontality while simultaneously giving in to the pressures of large development projects to overwhelm this horizontality. The city's geographic uniqueness has been endangered by the spread of huge mixed-use projects.

Mixed Use Development:

Over the past twenty years, large scale urban development has grown to match the size of real estate investments and has become increasingly mixed in program, catering to the demand for the flexibilization of uses on the part of developers. The mixture of uses has generated very provocative theories in architecture and urban design but rarely have these speculations led to anything more than the celebration and intensification of the isolation of the mixed-use projects from their context and to the separation among the different components of these large scale developments. The timid and rather inarticulate typologies of such development provide further testament to the poverty of the designresponse to this important urban and architectural challenge.

The studio looks carefully at these phenomena and the projections about their future. It also looks at some of the more challenging theoretical positions like those of Koolhaas, Abalos and Herreros, and Galiano. Benefiting from the increasing scale, population, and urban impact of mixed-use development, the studio then explores the potential of heightening the mixing and the urban dimensions of such projects.

The Panoramic Condition:

The panorama, as a visual experience and organizational system of horizontal spaces and views, has inspired urban planners and architects since the nineteenth century. Architects like Schinkel, Mies van der Rohe, and more recently, Enric Miralles, have gone beyond the compositional logic of perspectival space to introduce the multiple, mixed, and varied vistas organized around the urban experience whereby the viewer is able to be at once in the city and cognitive of its overall logic as if looking at it from outside.

Compositional and formal techniques used by these architects, such as dropping the middle ground; ambulation; horizontal symmetries; integration between the urban, architectural, and landscape aspects of the composition; overlaps among different views; heightened mixing of disparate elements; and the insinuation of voids are taken on as possible techniques for the development of a geographic design strategy.

This horizontal condition is not to be taken for sprawl but to the contrary, it is understood and celebrated as the potential of maintaining a sense of openness and visibility in the density of urban settings. The panoramic is an intensely urban experience that links the city to its larger geography through individual experiences.

Site and Program:

The site is a large piece of land in the new business district of Etiler in the European side of the city. It is adjacent to a major traffic intersection between the road leading to the Golden Horn and the road leading to the Bosphorus Bridge crossing to the Asian side. The site overlaps in part with the site of an actual competition for a mixed use development project. Some of the site's key features, such as its connectedness to the highway system, to a future metro stop, and to a big thicket of trees, are highlighted.

The size of development is about 200,000 m2, a significant part of which have to rise above the horizontal program is mixed including commercial, business, residential, and cultural components. The specific kind and proportion of each of these components is determined by each student based on their individual assessment of what is needed for the site and for their design strategy.

Studio Organization:

The studio is open to students from urban design, landscape, and architecture. It meets every Tuesday and Thursday.

It is sponsored by the Aga Khan Program at the GSD. It is being conducted in collaboration with Bilgi University in Istanbul. Professors Sibel Bozdogan (Lecturer at the GSD and at Bilgi) and Tansel Korkmaz (program director at Bilgi and Visiting Scholar at the GSD) and Han Tumertekin (who is teaching a parallel studio at Bilgi) takes part in our discussions and reviews.

A visit to Istanbul takes place during the first week of October.

MAKINAMADINA: Reconfiguring the Relationship Between Geography and Event in the City of Fez
GSD 1322/GSD 1511, with Aziza Chaouni

How can an urban event help ameliorate the conditions of the city? The studio addresses the question through the design of the Makina area of the old madina (city) of Fez in Morocco. Rediscovered by the world renowned Scared Music Festival that animates this area of the city for one week every summer, Bab al Makina Square and its surroundings otherwise remain abandoned despite their strategic location between the three main districts of the city, Fez Jdid, Fez Bali, and la Ville Nouvelle. The aim of the studio is to use the orchestration of the Festival events that temporarily reinvigorate Makina as an opportunity to generate a permanent design for the area and to rethink the geography of the city around the scenography of the event.

The students of the studio first lay out the event and organize access and temporary urban form around it. Each student then designs a prototype for one of the installations (e.g. exhibition and ticket booths, seating, parking entrances, landscaping). These installations will actually be built by the organizers of the festival and used for this summer's festival with artists like Barbara Hendricks performing there.

The students then take the experience of the temporary set-up to bear on their designs for a permanent layout for the Makina area by extending it to include other events like the culinary festival and a book fair, and more importantly to address the larger and more permanent needs of the city in terms of connectivity, accessibility, public life, and land use. The permanent program includes a culinary arts center on the site of a 19th century factory (the makina), a public parking and garden, and short term residences for participants in the events.

The main design ambitions of the studio are to:

• Study the relationship between the urban event and the normative performance of a public space
• Rethink open space in terms of its geographic role in the organization and perception of the city
• Explore the catalytic role of large scale architecture and urban fragments
• Reassess modern architectural/urban elements and qualities that have been inspired by Arab architecture (like the mat building, compactness, aggregation) and propose alternative interpretations of these qualities by design.

The studio is sponsored by the Aga Khan Program at the GSD and by the Esprit de Fez Foundation in Morocco. It includes a trip to Fez during the last week of February during which we meet with the city officials and work with the organizers of the festival.

Intermodal Istanbul
GSD 1510, Spring 2005

Exploring possible forms of intersection at Sirkeci Meydan(Square)
between a public square, a ferry terminal, an archaeological site, and a tram and train station

Summary:

In 2007, the first railway tunnel under the Bosphorus will start operating, carrying as many as 75,000 passengers per hour between the Asian and European sides of Istanbul. In a city of 15 million inhabitants and serious traffic congestion on the two existing bridges across the Bosphorus, the tunnel is going to radically affect mobility both in the city and in the larger transportation network between Europe and Asia. The tunnel crosses the Bosphorus between Sirkeci Square and Uskudar Square, the locations of the ferry terminals that had historically linked the two sides of the city and that in turn linked the two main train terminals, namely Sirkeci and Haydarpasha. Both Sirkeci, the end of the Orient Express on the European Side, and Haydarpasha, its starting point on the Asian side, open onto the Bosphorus and onto vast public spaces which link to other modes of transportation such as taxis, buses, and the recently revived tramways.

The tunnel will radically affect the use of the ferries as well as the organization and layout of the public spaces that link between these different modes of transportation. These public spaces include the space between the train station and the Bosphorus, a Byzantine archaoelogical site at the foot of the Topkapi Palace hill, and a commercial area to the side of the station. The new space will also acquire the role in orienting the travelers emerging from the underground in a city that has been traditionally characterized by amazing visibility due to its geography and to the Bosphorous.

The studio focuses on the redesign of Sirkeci Meydan (Square) and its surroundings, including the design of the new train-light rail terminal, the surrounding park and plaza, the ferry terminal, and surrounding buildings. The aim of the studio is to use the introduction of the tunnel as a means to rethink the role of public space in relationship to transportation hubs, as a means for urban rehabilitation, as a locale of social interaction among transient citizens, and between citizens and tourists, but also as a point of visual orientation in this city. The studio also aims to examine the perception of open space and interaction in a country that is turning towards the Europe and at a time when discussions about the future identity of Turkey is partly being addressed through the rehabilitation of Istanbul and through the shaping of its public spaces.

In parallel, the studio looks at the physical relationship between the different levels of a city: the underground, the archaeology, the water, and the street level. It explores the posibilities of mixing between the instruments and methods of urban design, landscape, and architecture.

Sirkeci Square:

In 1890 a train station was opened in Sirkeci Square adjacent to the docks. The building of the station at this point was intended to give the passengers arriving on the Orient Express a picturesque arrival into Istanbul. Even though the arrival to the city could happen at an earlier point, the Sultan provided the land for the new station to be built at a very privileged point on the Golden Horn. The station was designed by Jasmund, a German architect, in an Orientalist style, and was meant to embody the image of the Orient that the arriving Europeans would want to see. The station featured a famous restaurant and a front that opened on a series of terraces facing the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus. The docks of Sirkeci had been built during the Crimean war around the middle of the century in order to host the British and French navies. Afterwards, they were turned into a major ferry terminal that served to link Sirkeci with the Asian sideof Istanbul. Over the years, the role of train transportation has weakened and the terminal has primarily served inter-regional trains.

In the years that followed taxis and buses were also added. The recent flux of tourists to the nearby Byzantine sites and Topkapi Palace has increased the activity in Sirkeci but it remains, till today at least, a relatively underdeveloped area in the city.

With the opportunity provided by the construction of the tunnel and the archeological finds in the surrounding areas, the city is seriously considering rehabilitating the square and even suppressing the rail tracks at this very important site in order to give more visibility and prominence to the tip of the Golden Horn.

Sponsorship and Collaboration:

The studio is sponsored by the Aga Khan Program at the GSD covering travel and accommodation in Istanbul during a spring break visit. It is being conducted in collaboration with the Municipality of Greater Istanbul and with the Istanbul Technical University.

Research Fellow: Pars Kibarer

Square One: Martyrs' Square, Downtown Beirut, Lebanon
GSD 1510, Spring 2004

The program, site, and schedule of the studio coincide with those of an international competition, due in May 2004, to which the students are able to submit their projects.

More than ten years after embarking on a major reconstruction project, the city of Beirut is still looking for a clear strategy for its primary public square. While the master plan does indicate the recreation of several open spaces, very few of these has been designed or built in a convincing manner. The adopted master plan tends to define open spaces by deferring their character to the surrounding buildings, thus reinforcing the strategy that buildings, not roads or open spaces define the character of the city. It has also deferred the definition of public spaces in time where it has become increasingly clear that the character of urban spaces has to be defined directly with clear and forceful urban, landscape, and architectural strategies. Given the scale of the square and the vast clearing around it, this problem is most glaring in the area of Martyrs’ Square. In launching this competition, Beirut seems to acknowledge this problem. In more ways than one, the city is going back to square one.

Formally, the studio explores the possibility that the very idea of postponement or deferral could be turned around to generate new conceptions of public space in the city. The sociologist Isaac Joseph distinguishes between two forms of public space, the full and the empty. Full spaces are those where the architecture and the programmed activities guide the use of the spaces. Empty spaces are those that provide free frameworks for a public life that can vary and change. The potential of designing “empty” squares is yet to be fully explored.

The studio is sponsored by the Aga Khan Program of Activities at the GSD and is being conducted in collaboration with Solidere, the real estate development company in charge of the redevelopment of downtown Beirut, and with the American University of Beirut, Department of Architecture. A visit to Beirut is scheduled during spring break.

A Field of Schools: Rethinking the Relationship between School and City in San Diego
GSD 1304, Fall 2001

Summary
The studio revises the predominant models of school design in the United States by addressing more effectively the relationship between the school and its surrounding context. It focuses on reconsidering the "California school paradigm" in the city of San Diego and on the design of new elementary schools for the neighborhood of City Heights.

California Paradigm
Over the past fifty years, San Diego has faithfully adhered to the California paradigm of school design. Initiated by Richard Neutra and developed by post-WWII architects like John Lyon Reid, Jon Carl Warnecke, and Ernest Kump this model consisted of sprawling single story buildings placed in large open spaces (more than 8 acres) with very little interface with the surrounding context. The classrooms were sparsely arranged in clusters directly linked to the outdoors. The California school paradigm set new standards for schools throughout the United States in the 1950s, and it also helped spread modern architecture in American cities and suburbs. Many of the determining conditions of this model have since changed, but until now, it has persisted relatively unchallenged.

City Heights, San Diego
In 1998, the San Diego City Schools, a consolidated school district, received about 1.5 billion dollars in bonds for an ambitious schools construction program. About two thirds of this money has been allocated for the restoration and expansion of existing schools and one third for building 14 new elementary schools. Each of these new elementary schools is to house an average of 700 students in about 32 classrooms. The demand has been created by reduced classroom size policy and by population increase.

City Heights, a low-income neighborhood with a large ethnic population, has recently attracted a large group of new immigrants. The San Diego City Schools has decided to place 5 of the 14 new schools in this City Heights. Given the high density of this neighborhood (one of the highest in California), it has been difficult to find adequate sites for the schools, and any extensive clearing of houses results in the displacement of families for whom those new schools are being built. The new schools have to be located on smaller sites (about 3 acres) and go higher than one floor.

While catering to the educational needs of its neighborhood, a new school in an under-serviced part of town like City Heights bears the additional responsibility of providing much needed amenities and public space. The community is demanding to share the open spaces of the schools and some of its functions like the library, meeting rooms and medical services. In the words of the director of the schools construction program, "The school district has money and the communities have needs." As such, the school district of San Diego has been compelled to rethink the role of the school as an educational as well as community facility.

Quantity adds a new dimension to the problem. Already City Heights has about five elementary schools and one high school. The addition of five more schools creates an unprecedented institutional density in a rather small area. A new "field condition" is emerging whereby the schools can no longer mark themselves by scale, isolation, or by distinct iconography. Their dispersion and codependency with the existing residential and commercial fabric cannot be adequately addressed with the old California paradigm or with the chain link fences that are used nowadays to demarcate the schools against encroaching residences.

This new phenomenon is not particular to City Heights nor is it restricted to schools. It is an emerging social and programmatic condition that is causing a radical revision of the role and presence of the public institution in the American city. An increasingly dispersed public realm in face of increasingly particularized private demands still awaits formal articulation. The studio aims to give form to this new condition.

Design Issues:
In this respect, there are different scales of design issues to consider, each with the potential of generating provocative formal propositions for both the city and the school. For example:

1. Urban Issues: The emerging network of schools needs to be worked out at the level of overall urban design impact on the neighborhood of City Heights in relationship with the infrastructure, the residential areas, and the commercial zone, but also as a coherent and codependent group of institutions with its own physical links and character.
   
2. Interface Issues: Once the school assumes urban responsibilities and takes on programs and spaces that belong to the community, its identity and isolation are challenged. The design issues at this level consist of identifying ways in which the additional programs and public spaces can be introduced against the programmatic and iconographic distinctness of the school.
   
3. Inter-Schools Issues: Given the close distance between schools, some of them will have to be rethought as pairs or as constellations. The sharing of programs and the potential fusion between schools, the impact of doubling and transmutability, will require new formal repertoires.
   
4. Intramural Issues: The internal organization of the individual school will have to adapt to this extroversion and interconnectedness among schools. For example, given the population shifts within the city, the constant adaptation to changing size of student population could further encourage the use of portable classrooms that follow the students in this field of schools.

Isopolis: Addressing the Scales of Urban Life in Athens
with Peter Rowe, Spring 1996

This study, conducted by a group of students at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, addresses the general question of how large tracts of land within a metropolitan area, formerly the sites of major infrastructure improvements, can be redeveloped to productively address different scales of urban life. With changes in transportation and communications technologies, as well as in the ways and means of producing goods and services, many cities now have well-located and otherwise valuable parcels of land potentially available for redevelopment. Many large railroad sidings embedded within European and American cities, for instance, are being converted to other uses. Old port facilities in various parts of the world, now rendered obsolete by extensive containerized and bulk cargo operations, are also undergoing reintegration into their host cities. Old airports and truck depots often share a similar fate. A central question remains, however. How can this redevelopment take place in the most socially and environmentally beneficial manner? More often than not the large tracts of land are owned publicly, thus providing direct access to future public benefits. Nevertheless, just as often the capitalization and entrepreneurship required to redevelop such extensive properties, with so many public agencies strapped for funds nowadays, also needs extensive involvement from the private sector.

The result is that a balancing of claims usually ensues between the public interest and private gains. Moreover, these claims normally operate simultaneously at different scales of redevelopment and publicly-minded or individually-promoted entrepreneurial activity. Rarely, if ever, does the sheer scale of redevelopment allow a comparatively singular and well-defined use of a site. In effect, redevelopment becomes an exercise in city building at all levels of activity. Furthermore, the relative prominence of these sites for redevelopment seems to automatically require a large regional facility and yet the amount of land available, together with neighboring uses, almost just as automatically requires development of many smaller scale, local facilities.

The site for this urban design studio investigation was Hellinikon-the existing airport in Athens, Greece-after the present airport function is moved to the east of the city on the other side of Mt. Hymettos, in the relatively expansive plain around Spata. Currently, the airport and the adjacent former military base are located reasonably close to the center of Athens, parallel to and close by the sea.

Areas to the north and south of the existing airport, between Mt. Hymettos and the coast, are well established and likely to continue to be valuable sites for residential and commercial development. Presently, the southern municipalities of Glyfada, Voula, Kavouri, and Vouliagmeni have something of the character of resorts and house many of the Athenian well-to-do.

By contrast, areas to the east and north-east house lower-income communities. Transit improvements to this part of the city have also been planned, vastly increasing potential overall access. Athens' fixed-rail mass transit system-now in the initial stages of development-will eventually reach south to the edge of the site, and a tramway system has been planned to run along the coast. Although the airport, technically speaking, is under one political jurisdiction, the general area is shared among three municipalities, potentially complicating matters of implementation. However, returning to a central theme of the study, the appeal of Hellinikon lay in its potential interest as an extensive site for redevelopment and city building. The big question, though, was what to do with such a large site and how to put it constructively to another productive use?

The publication Isopolis produced from this studio summarizes individual and group design investigations concluded by twelve students, as a part of their regular academic program at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

Open City, Rebuilding Downtown Beirut's Waterfront
Spring 1995

Idea of an Open City

Apart from being the site of numerous contemporary development opportunities, the downtown area of Beirut presents an exaggerated case of the results of a more general problem of urban conflict, or potential conflict, due to socio-political factionalism. Responsible reconstruction of downtown Beirut, therefore, raises a question about the extent to which one can imagine the physical conformation of an important segment of a city enabling and enhancing the creation of civil society through the interaction and cohabitation of different population groups, as well as economic and social interests. More abstractly, work on the site allows for defining and testing possible coincidences between socio-political models about relations among various institutions of civil society and the state, on the one hand, and models of physical development, land use and urban architectural expression, on the other. Clearly to insist on a direct and complete connection between these rather different aspects of the public sphere would be foolhardy and, indeed, quite unnecessary. After all, during the temporal life of a city, socio-political regimes come and go, whereas many public buildings, seven in the Lebanon, remain.

Alternatively, with technological changes, new ways of serving the same institutional functions can often be established. To insist on there being no relationship would also be misplaced, as proscribed patterns of land use do clearly influence who can and cannot have access to available services, not to mention expressions of power and patronage which are so often a part of urban architectural design. Inherent in the idea of an open city is providing so much room and the right kind of space for as many to participate in civic life as possible, including its economic markets.

In principle, and in the practical results from this studio exercise, there appear to be at least three general design responses which profitably might be entertained towards these questions and this issue. The first is to redevelop downtown Beirut with the highest practicable mixture of uses, seen both functionally and in terms of scale, and at the finest possible 'grain' of spatial distribution. Here the underlying principle is that many different functions and modes of development could be fostered simultaneously, thus enfranchising a broad segment of the population.

Downtown Waterfront, Beirut

A second approach could be to maintain a certain separation of uses, with regard to operating efficiencies and the need for special services while still actively encouraging specific zones for cohabitation and appropriate interaction among the different groups and interests.By contrast, a third and final approach might make flexible provisions within plans, building configurations, and infrastructural layouts for such interaction and cohabitation, but, in no way attempt to be predetermined.

Yi-Ti-Liang-Yi Zhi Jian: Redevelopment in Suzhou, China

The subject of this design studio, at the Graduate School of Design, were some of the urban design implications of the Changjiang Delta Region's planning policies and Suzhou's master plan, especially where distinctive parts of Suzhou's physical environment come together spatially. Historically, the town of Suzhou dates back about 2,500 years to the reign of King Wu. Originally the settlement was made some 30 kilometers inland from Lake Tai - Taihi - to the south and west, separated from the lake, for defensive purposes, by a range of fortified hills. The name Su-zhou comes form Minister Su and zhou refers to a particular category or type of town. During imperial times Suzhou was a relatively important provincial center but never a capital or city of similar rank. For a period of time during the Song dynasty the town was called Pingjiang, with a district in the old town of the same name still existing today. The name later reverted to Suzhou during the Ming dynasty in the fourteenth century A.D. and has remained ever since. The town of Suzhou came into prominence with the Grand Canal and other systems of waterways, linking Beijing in the north with Hangzhou in the south. It was traditionally both a center of trade in its region and a major center for silk production. The present population of Suzhou is 1.05 million inhabitants with a further 'floating population' of workers coming in to town, from neighboring rural villages and hamlets, on the order of 100,000 people. Between now and the year 2010, the population is expected to rise to around 1.8 million, making Suzhou a medium-sized Chinese city.

In order to explicitly address competing claims placed on traditional areas and the productive land around them, the City of Suzhou has developed a master plan which seeks to develop two new satellite communities to the east and west of the old town. With the overall aspects of the body of the old town and the two wings of new development accounted for adequately, what remains less well attended to is primarily the areas in between. These in-between zones are precisely where the clarity of the city's master plan of one body and two wings can be obscured by untimely or indiscriminate development. This is especially the case with respect to the ideas of open space inherent in the plan. In short, redevelopment of many existing areas, including historical conservation and renewal of older areas, is an emerging and, one could say, pressing need in Suzhou, alongside the on-going redevelopment of its historic core and the new development of its two suburban satellites.

An initial site visit was made to Suzhou in January 1997, followed by another including students in March of 1997, for the purposes of field reconnaissance and first-hand acquaintance with prevailing cultural and developmental circumstances. A one-day charrette was also conducted on-site, with the participation of young local Chinese design professionals from the planning bureau, resulting in a conceptual plan for redevelopment of the Shantang Canal from the old moat to Tiger Hill in the west. This plan was presented, in turn, to the mayor and the heads of relevant bureaus and committees.

The publication, Yi-Ti-Liang-Yi Zhi Jian, produced from this studio, summarizes individual and group design investigations concluded by twelve students, as a part of their regular academic program at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

Attraversare la Citt: Redevelopment around the Via Appia Nuova in Rome
with Peter Rowe, Spring 1998

Gregory J. Haley MAUD '98, Model View of Masterplan

As cultural artifacts, cities embody many of our aims and aspirations with regard to day-to-day life, help guide many of our civilizing tendencies, provide the backdrop for many of our extraordinary celebrations, and encapsulate much of our history. They are determined by what we ask of them as well as in turn determining of our own lives within them. They change over time as we change, while also serving as change agents and marking both events by their very existence and continuing evolution. Over time, memories fade, past events are forgotten and the parts of a city that once played host to those experiences take on altered meanings, new associations and support different livelihoods.

The area along and in the vicinity of the Via Appia Nuova in Rome stretching from San Giovanni in Laterano, inside the old wall, to Parco Santo Stefano well outside the wall in the southeast is an urban quarter embodying many of these characteristics. Some parts are old and some are new. Indeed, areas along the Via Appia Nuova and several of its major cross-streets and intersections represent a veritable transect through Roman urban history, especially since the turn of the century, and a rich reservoir of specific urban experiences. It remains, nevertheless, an under-recognized and poorly understood section of the city, especially in comparison to many other areas.

The aim of the studio was twofold. The first was to demonstrate how a substantial urban area in Rome might acquire a greater sense of local identity, recover both greater day-to-day life and contact with its own history, and develop a broader range of viable public open spaces and operative cultural venues. The second was to propose specific redevelopment projects for the area, addressing issues such as improved circulation and access, economic revitalization, improved visibility of major historic and recreation areas, and greater general coordination among potential infrastructure improvements and adjacent building projects and land uses.

The studio was sponsored and performed in collaboration with ACER (Associazione Costruttori Edili di Roma) and INArch (Istituto Nationale Architettura). A site visit was made to Rome during the spring break and special assistance was provided throughout the term by Professor Rosario Pavia from Rome.