Il Festival dell’Architettura di Roma – contemporary heritage

The installation “Girotondo” is proposed within the area of Marconi Park, located in the district of the same name in Rome, within a consolidated and heterogeneous urban structure, with the aim of interpreting and dialoguing with the existing architectural-landscape heritage. All cities are archaeological landscapes, by their nature stratified, made of signs, transformations and traces. Not only that, they are also formed by social relations, by the interrelation between natural and/or human factors developed over time. This leads to a cross-reading of the events, civilizations, languages, construction techniques, materials, and men/women who have inhabited this place. In the incessant evolution of spaces, forms are repeated by imitating, emulating or simply remembering what has been. The installation borrows words and forms from the past, activating visual and conceptual relationships to dialogue with the present. The morphologically circular form, composed of wooden elements, is arranged so that one is oriented toward a specific subject: a tree (Populus alba), placed at the center in a vegetal stage. The elements have a variable triangular cross-section that gradually rises from 0.00 to 0.70 m, forming a circle 6.70 m in diameter. The variable height evokes the complexity of the city’s layering and at the same time works to create seating of different sizes, giving the possibility to choose how to use the installation. The need to talk about invisible landscapes and transformed or disappeared architecture aims to raise awareness of the importance of the urban-landscape heritage we have inherited.