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Access Provided by UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS, LONDON at 02/10/13 8:11PM GMT

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8 8

ADAPTATION AS A MODEL FOR NEW ARCHITECTURE IN

HISTORIC SETTINGS

Some Observations from Rome

STEVEN W. SEMES

University of Notre Dame

Figure 1. Piazza di Pietra, Rome. The surviving portions of the north peristyle and cella wall of the ancient

Temple of Hadri an, compl eted 145 AD (right) , were inco rporated into the Dogana di Terra by Car lo and Francesco

Fontana 16911700, remodeled for the Borsa in 1874 by Virginio Vespignani. The Corinthian order of the temple

was adapted and extended across the new facade. (Steven W. Semes)

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For centuries, many European cities and towns managed to accommodate growth and change while sustaining

the historic character that, in modern times, has brought them recognition as cultural resources of high artistic

value. All living organisms, too, must negotiate the competing claims of constancy and change through processes

of adaptation that have long been the subject of scientific investigation. Recent developments in urban theory

advocate the conscious application of similarly adaptive strategies for maintaining balance between necessary

change and the conservation of historic character in the built environment. Rome, with its millennia of construc-

tion, alteration, demolition, and rebuilding, offers the clearest example of how different kinds of changeboth

adaptive and catastrophicimpact the city over time. After a half-century or more of architecture and urbanism

that departed from traditional practice and privileged contrast with preexisting conditions over formal continuity,

historic centers have come under a new threat. The idea of adaptation offers an alternative that redefines urban

conservation practices in the interest of sustaining historic character over the long term, while permitting neces-

sary growth and change.

An essential challenge facing living organisms, ecosystems, and man-made built envi-

ronments alike is that of negotiating permanence and change. In order to survive, all must

succeed at adaptation, balancing the need for a persistent identity with the need to

respond appropriately to new conditions. The insight that cities also adapt by means anal-

ogous to those operative in natural systems emerged fifty years ago when Jane Jacobs

defined the city as a problem of organized complexity.1 More recently, principles drawn

from biology and ecology have led to the theory of the urban transect and the emergence

of smart codes and other tools of the New Urbanism.2 A comprehensive theory of archi-

tecture and urban design inspired by the study of natural forms of order has been

mapped by Christopher Alexander and others.3 We are now beginning to understand that

our success as architects, planners, preservationists, and policy-makers depends on our

ability to imitate the processes by which both natural systems and traditional human

communities sustain their character or identity while accommodating growth and change.

Adaptive principles have particular relevancy for the design of new construction in historic

settings, whether additions to landmark structures or infill construction in historic dis-

tricts.

Alexander notes that what gives life to historic cities and natural systems alike is

their ability to generate emergent forms of order, operating according to patterns that,unlike fixed rules, can be amended through a process of self-organization. Change need not

subvert the preexisting order if it occurs through a process of what Alexander describes as

S E M E S A D A P T A T I O N A S A M O D E L F O R N E W A R C H I T E C T U R E 8 9

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9 0 C H A N G E O V E R T I M E

Figure 2. Theater of Marcellus, Rome. View of restored remains of the Roman theater constructed 1113

AD, with the superimposed Palazzo Orsini by Baldassare Peruzzi, 152327. A section of the lower two tiers

of the theater facade was reconstructed in contrasting material during the restoration by Alberto Calza

Bini, 192632 (right). (Steven W. Semes)

structure-preserving transformation. In this way, a system maintains a dynamic balance

between order and chaosthat organized complexity Jacobs noted and which Alexander

calls wholeness. In a coherent adaptive system, each part is gradually fitted to the parts

near it and is simultaneously fitted by the whole to its position and performance in the

whole.4 Such mutual adaptation among the parts, the basis for morphogenesis in natural

systems, is also the key to classical composition at the architectural scale5 and to the

historical development of traditional cities at the urban scale.6 Such wholeness at the scale

of a city does not emerge all at once, however, but must be generated step by step, the

individual structures and ensembles contributing to the larger order of streets, squares,

and districts as they develop over time.7 It is the physical evidence of this incremental

adaptive process that enriches the palimpsest that we see in historic cities, preeminently

in Rome (Fig. 1).

The concept of adaptation offers a nonsubjective basis for finding the appropriate

balance between permanence and change in historic settings subject to preservation regu-

lation: it is not a purely aesthetic judgment in the usual sense. Alexander, referring toany environmental structure (in the sense of an ordered whole rather than an individual

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Figure 3. Medieval house on the Lungotevere, Rome, constructed almost entirely of antique spolia,

including the classical column on the corner and white marble fragments, many bearing inscriptions, used

as rubble masonry. (Steven W. Semes)

building), suggests that we must ask of any change or modification of this structure, or

for any evolution of that wholeness, whether the new wholeness emerges and continues

naturally from the previous state of the structure, or if it is in some sense a violation of

its previous structure.8 If we substitute character for Alexanders structure, denoting

aspects of form, material, and use that give a place its specific identity and cultural signifi-

cance, we can define an adaptive approach to conservation as one that sustains the charac-

ter of the preexisting setting and permits only alterations or new elements that facilitate

what we can call character-preserving transformations. New features are introduced only

if they are deemedappropriateto the placethat is, both fitting and exemplary, reinforc-

ing valued existing qualities and setting a pattern for others to follow. An increase inwholeness then becomes both the consequence and the aim of urban conservation strate-


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by adding to them only what is recognizably unrelated to their previous development. As

contemporary architecture has assumed a progressively more transgressive stance

toward context, visually dissonant interventions in historic settings have become com-

monplace,11 along with growing public criticism of both the architects and the preservation

authorities who approve their differentiated designs.12 This is an opportune moment,

therefore, to explore how commitment to adaptation might realign contemporary preser-

vation with the best practices of earlier periods, promote the survival or recovery of build-

ing cultures whose products are now in our care, and ensure a future for historic places

in which growth and change are permitted but do not come at the expense of valued

character.

Rome, with its two and a half millennia of history, offers a unique laboratory in

which to observe interventions in relation to adaptation. It is useful to distinguish two

types:material reappropriationand character-conserving transformation. The first is a literal

adaptation of building materials and structures, repurposing them for new uses or, more

radically, deconstructing them for salvage and incorporating spoliainto very different newconfigurations. Depending on the specific outcomes, such reappropriations may be genu-

inely adaptiveas in the Temple of Hadrian or the Theater of Marcellus, where the origi-

nal composition and character of the monument remain legible despite successive

alterationsor they may prove catastrophic, as in the crudely cannibalistic reuse of

Figure 5. Palazzo Farnese, Rome. Main facade by Antonio Sangallo the Younger, 153446, completed

with alterations by Michelangelo, 154749. (Steven W. Semes)


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Figure 6. Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella (Chiesa Nuova), Rome. Facade by Martino Longhi the Elder,

158690 (right), with addition of Oratorio dei Filippini by Francesco Borromini, 163743 (left). (Steven

W. Semes)

antique columns, statuary, marbles, and rough masonry for the construction of the medie-

val, Renaissance, and Baroque city (Figs. 2 and 3).13 But the visible survival of old materials

and structures in Rome would represent little more than a recycling program of unprece-

dented longevity and scope were there not also considerable continuity in formal princi-

plespreeminently the classical language of architecture. The builders who lined the nave

of Santa Maria Maggiore with Ionic columns in the fifth century and those who, fourteen

centuries later, placed a row of antique Ionic columns across the facade of the Palazzo

Wedekindthese recycled from an ancient site in Veiosimilarly understood the col-

umns role in the formal grammar of classicism, quite apart from the provenance of the

columns themselves (Fig. 4).

This formal continuity leads to the second type of adaptation, which requires that

new and old elements form a harmonious whole. New features are judged appropriate to

the extent they emerge naturally from the preexisting space, structure, composition,

proportions, and ornament. New features or configurations may depart from the previous

design but do not radically alter it; and at each step, intervention aims at a new coherent

composition that retains the valued character of the old. This aim is facilitated by the useof a consistent style, or a group of closely related styles over an extended period. Most of

Rome built between the early sixteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries illustrates both

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Figure 7. Corso del Rinascimento, Rome, showing new facades by Arnaldo Foschini inserted into theexisting fabric as a result of the opening of the new thoroughfare, 193638. (Steven W. Semes)

types of adaptation, as builders typically emphasized material and formal continuity

among buildings of different periods or between different phases of construction, rather

than differentiating them by means of conspicuous visual clues. This makes buildings in

the center of Rome notoriously difficult to date based on appearance; while this may prove

frustrating to historians, it promotes that ongoing mutual adaptation of the parts and the

whole that Alexander noted as giving life to cities.

Lets consider some specific cases: For the architects of the Renaissance, surviving

antique buildings were a source of formal inspiration even while also serving as a stockpile

of salvaged materials,14 but a more consciously adaptive approach to preexisting context

is suggested by a poignant passage near the end of Leon Battista Albertis treatise De Re

Aedificatorium(first published in Venice, 1478):

The brevity of human life and the scale of the work ensure that scarcely any large

building is ever completed by the same man as begins it. While we, the innovativearchitects who follow, strive by all means to make some alteration, and take pride in

it, as a result, something begun well by another is perverted and finished incorrectly.


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Figure 8. Garbatella district, Rome, with a master plan inspired by Gustavo Giovannoni, showing row

houses designed by Mario Marchi, 1929. (Steven W. Semes)

I feel that the original intentions of the author, the product of mature reflection,

must be upheld. Those who began the work might have had some motive that

escapes you, even though you examine it long and thoroughly, and consider it fairly.15

Alberti followed this principle in his design for the unfinished facade of Santa Maria

Novella in Florence (145878), where Gothic arches had risen through the first story.

Alberti retains the earlier work, continues the material palette, and weaves the preexisting

and new elements into a coherent composition. His design is not a replication of the

preexisting state, nor a completion of it according to a documented or presumed earlier

design, but an adaptation that subtly changes style from its Gothic base to a fully classical

culmination.

In the following century, Michelangelos architectural projects exhibit a similarly

adaptive attitude toward existing contextsparadoxically, because of Buonarrotis reputa-

tion as an individualistic genius unwilling to compromise his aesthetic vision. But in nearly

all his major architectural commissions he accepted previous conditions, evidently welcom-

ing their limitations as artistic opportunities.16 Among his projects in Rome, we can note

the Piazza del Campidoglio, where he took advantage of the preexisting configuration ofstructures and topography to endow the new civic space with high drama, and the Basilica

of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where he undertook a straightforward conversion of the great

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hall of the Baths of Diocletian to serve as the nave of the church, the modesty of his

intervention now partly obscured by the subsequent Baroque remodeling by Vanvitelli.

But the clearest expression of Michelangelos attitude is the Palazzo Farnese, where

he inherited the partially complete work of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger following the

latters death in 1546. Rather than dramatizing a distinction between the earlier work and

his own contribution, Michelangelo made only three changes to Sangallos projected

facade: he designed a larger, more elaborate cornice, increased the height of the wall space

below that cornice, and altered the form of the central window at the piano nobile. By

these limited but decisive means, he was content to enliven the character of Sangallos

work without essentially changing its style and, in the process, as James Ackerman noted,

he created Sangallos masterpiece (Fig. 5).17 Deference toward his predecessor continues

in the interior courtyard, where Michelangelo used the second floor as a transition band

linking Sangallos completed ground floor and his own new top story, with its quite differ-

ent character. Showing that he was not alone in his approach, two successorsVignola

and Vasarifollowed his example and, as a result, the Palazzo Farnese was completed sohomogenously that observers were unable to distinguish the work of the four architects

who contributed to the design.18

Clearly, adaptation need not inhibit creativity or innovation but, rather, can be cata-

lytic of both. There is no evidence that Michelangelowho bowed to no one, including

several popes, on matters aestheticfelt constrained by either preexisting conditions or

the artistic tradition which he honored even when he departed from it. Michelangelos

contributions are always differentiated from the preexisting work, but in ways that sus-

tain formal coherence in the new whole. Intervening in a setting formed by the tradition

in which he himself practiced, he chose not to depart radically from the previously estab-

lished style, but to bring to it those incremental innovations he felt called for by new

conditions. Ackerman suggests this is what Michelangelo had in mind when, speaking of

classical composition, he wrote the means are unlimited and may be chosen at will.19

That is, innovation within the language is welcome if consistent with the aim toward

wholeness at a larger scale.20

The urban interventions of the erapreeminently those of Julius II and Sixtus

Vaimed at strengthening the latent formal order of the city by means of scenographic

routes linking important monuments or destinations.21 Incremental and local adjustments

of facades, streets, and piazze were intended to bring greater formal clarity to the seem-

ingly accidental medieval city.22 New construction, designed by Bramante, Peruzzi, Bernini,

Borromini, and others, typically rose in contrast to the more modest scale and relative

informality of medieval structures, but revealed a persistent aim of recovering and rein-

forcing the formal conception of the city inherited from the ancients, articulated within

the continually evolving classical language. These aspirations continued to serve as a telos

for urban craftsmanship into the twentieth century (Fig. 6).

In the second half of the nineteenth century, architects in Romeas in other Euro-pean capitalsconfronted the challenge of adapting the historic center to the needs of a

booming metropolis, now the capital of a new nation. The contrast between old and new


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was now not so much one of style as of scale and typeand a fundamentally new concep-

tion of urbanism. Napoleon IIIs Parisian model of isolated monuments rising from broad

boulevards and wide-open spaces carved out of the medieval fabric was widely imitated in

Europe and elsewhere, becoming the archetype of the modern city. In Rome, too, proposals

were debated forsventramenti(gutting) to carve broad, straight Parisian-style boulevards

and open plazas through the medieval city, but these were countered by the more adaptive

approach ofdiradamento (pruning or thinning-out) proposed by Gustavo Giovannoni,

in which new streets and open spaces would be threaded through the existing fabric by

means of selective removal or reconfiguration of existing structures.23 Following this strat-

egy, planners of the Corso Vittorio Emaneule II and the Corso del Rinascimento managed to

provide needed traffic arteries while limiting demolitions, maneuvering around important

monuments, and presenting new construction often skillfully inserted into the historic con-

Figure 9. Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, by Pio Piacentini, 187883, with addition by Firouz Galdo,

Paolo Desideri, and Michele De Lucchi, 2003. (Steven W. Semes)

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text (Fig. 7). If the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II could be called a masterpiece of common

sense,24 there were also grievous losses: Thousands of structures were demolished in mis-

guidedsventramentiduring the Fascist era, including the destruction of the old spinaof the

Borgo Vaticano, which Giovannoni opposed, courageously and virtually alone.25

At the architectural scale, Giovannoni called for greater respect for the minor archi-

tecture that defines the context of the major monuments, and stressed the need for new

construction that preserves the character of that context. If one doesnt know how to

create a new contextual art, he wrote, one may have recourse to the simple forms, closer

to us, of the Renaissance; the traditional crafts carried out not in architectural camouflage

but in elements like balconies, loggias, railings and balustrades, etc.26 Built examples of

this approach can be seen at Citta Giardino Aniene and the Garbatella district, projects

master-planned or inspired by Giovannoni and carried out in collaboration with sympa-

thetic colleagues, as well as in public housing projects of the Istituto per le Case Popolari

(ICP) at San Saba, Testaccio, Trionfale, Flaminio, and elsewhere designed under his influ-

ence. These projects adapt local urban block patterns, architectural typologies, formal lan-guages, and craft traditions to meet the needs of state-sponsored low-income housing

while retaining a character consistent with the citys historic neighborhoods. They remain

models of humane urbanism (Fig. 8).27

Figure 10. Stabilimento della Birra Peroni, Rome, by Gustavo Giovannoni, 190812. View along Via Nizza.

Portions of existing external walls were incorporated into the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACRO), by

Odile Decq and Benoit Cornette, 20032006. (Steven W. Semes)


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1 0 0 C H A N G E O V E R T I M E

Figure 11. San Leonardo District, Bologna. New housing along Via San Leonardo by Pier Luigi Cervellati

and others, 1970. (Steven W. Semes)

In the early 1930s, the polemics of the Rationalists and the internationalism of Le

Corbusier began to be felt in Rome,28 and by 1945, Giovannoni expressed alarm at their

damaging impacts on the city. He called for the maturity necessary to have stable forms

that represent the architecture of our time but could be taken seriously for at least two

centuries in the citys life or, with necessary adaptations, could be harmonious with both

the past and the future.29 But after the war the ascendant modernist program supplanted

Giovannonis adaptive approach: preservation of newly isolated monuments became a spe-

cialty of conservators, archaeologists, and historians, and the design of new buildings and

cities pursued aims for which the study and conservation of historic places were largely

irrelevant. The 1964 Charter of Venice, as broadly interpreted, sought to prevent the falsifi-

cation that a new generation of architects and conservators saw in the prewar practices.30

Visible contrast between new and old features became standard practice, both for restora-

tions of museum environments like the Markets of Trajan, and for new construction, such

as the addition to Palazzo delle Esposizioni or the new glazed atrium at the heart of

the Musei Capitolini (Fig. 9). 31 The Museum of the Ara Pacis, adjacent to the ancient Mauso-

leum of Augustus and completed in 2006 to the design of Richard Meier, inserts a neo-

International Style aesthetic not otherwise visible in the historic center. In these cases, thenew and the old are not only clearly differentiated but seem locked in irreconcilable conflict.

The antiadaptive approach was taken in the recent alteration of a portion of one of

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Figure 12. Rome Studies Program of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture. Student project

for a new palazzo on the site of buildings demolished in the 1930s on Via Giulia, 2009. (Gina Paietta)

Giovannonis own works in Rome, the former Peroni Brewery complex, built to his designs

in 190812 and regarded as a landmark of early twentieth-century industrial architecture

(Fig. 10).32 Architects Odile Decq and Benoit Cornette dramatized the contrast between

preexisting and added elements in an act that transgresses the lessons of history.33 The

architects asserted: It was necessary to maintain both of the existing facades, and we

removed a little piece at the corner to show that we existed.34 In an instance of facad-

ism, the old street walls were isolated as freestanding objets trouves unrelated to the

reconfigured spaces behind them and penetrated by glass volumes that seem to be break-

ing them apart. Projects more respectful of Giovannonis buildings and the surrounding

context were submitted in the competition won by Decq and Cornette, but these were setaside by the jury for the lack of risk, novelty, and rupture in the schemes, attributes

which instead fully characterized that of the winner.35 Following the same logic, Massimi-

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liano Fuksas has designed a radical alteration to the former Unione Militare building just

off the Via del Corso, among the few examples of turn-of-the-twentieth-century classical

commercial architecture in the center of Rome.36 Approvals by conservation authorities of

similarly dissonant interventions have become commonplace internationally. The aim has

shifted: the historic patrimony, formerly viewed as an evolving tradition to be sympatheti-

cally adapted to new conditions, is now seen by many in the conservation field as material

to be mined or used as a pretext for dramatizing rupture and transgression.37

Numerous critics have called into question the theoretical basis for the cultivation of

difference, and preservation authorities, facing rising criticism of current policies, have

been forced to recognize dissenting views.38 Crucially, the recovery of traditional formal

languages in contemporary architectural practice challenges the Venice Charters contem-

porary stamp, now that contemporary architecture can no longer be defined as exclu-

sively modernist. A recovered practice of traditional architecture and urbanism has

realized projects that sustain the character of historic contexts in Paris, Brussels, London,

New York, and on numerous university campuses, to cite only some of the more prominentexamples.39 Over the last several decades, a program of urban conservation reminiscent of

Giovannoni and the Roman School has transformed the historic center of Bologna through

a combination of preservation and adaptive new construction (Fig. 11). Recently, my

undergraduate students of the Rome Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame

School of Architecture proposed new buildings for sites along the Via Giulia left vacant by

demolitions in the 1930s, inserting new versions of the historic types formerly on the site

and reprising the materials and formal language of the historic setting (Fig. 12).40

Rome displays the visual record of centuries of interventions of all kinds, from the

adaptive to the catastrophic; along with much disruption, we see a remarkable continuity

of aim and built consequences. More recently, here as elsewhere, an architectural culture

committed to the rhetoric of difference has interrupted the adaptive tradition that pro-

duced many of the sites we now valuesites whose historic character is now under threat

from within the conservation field itself. An escape from this contradiction is offered by

a conservation ethic that would restore the adaptive strategy of character-preserving

transformation in pursuit of that wholeness that gives life to cities. Such an ethic must

defend the preponderance of continuity over change in historic centers, respect the proc-

esses and products of historic building cultures, and commit itself to extending those

building cultures into the future by means of appropriate adaptation.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to acknowledge the advice of Michael Mehaffy during the preparation

of this article, particularly regarding the theory of adaptation and its role in the work of

Christopher Alexander.

References1. Jane Jacobs,The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage, 1962), 440.

2. For the theor y of the transect, see Andres Duany, Transect Planning,Journal of the American Plan-

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ning Association 68, no. 3 (American Planning Association, 2002): 24566; for form-based codes, see

Andres Duany, Jeff Speck, and Mike Lydon, The Smart Growth Manual(New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009).

3. Christopher Alexander,The Nature of Order, 4 vols. (Berkeley: Center for Environmental Structure,

2002). For an overview of Alexanders thoughts at the interface between architecture and science, see

his paper, New Concepts in Complexity Theory Arising from Studies in the Field of Architecture,

Katarxis, no. 3, May 2003 (available online at http://www.katarxis3.com). At the same site, see also

Lucien Steil, Brian Hanson, Michael Mehaffy, and Nikos Salingaros, eds., New Science, New Urban-

ism, New Architecture? Editors Introduction, which includes an interview with biologist Brian Good-win, physicist Philip Ball, and mathematician Ian Stewart in which they discuss ideas drawn from

their fields that have relevance to architecture and urbanism.

4. Alexander, New Concepts in Complexity Theory, 1415.

5. This concept is reflected in Albertis definition of proportion as a critical sympathy of the parts,

based on the Vitruvian concept ofsymmetria. Leon Battista Alberti,On the Art of Building in Ten Books ,

trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavenor (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), 301303; and

Marcus Pollio VitruviusThe Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Ingrid D. Rowland and Thomas Noble

Howe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 47.

6. For a comprehensive study of the varied adaptive processes by which cities organize themselves, see

Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped(Boston: Little, Brown, 1991) and The City Assembled (Boston: Little,

Brown, 1992).

7. Alexander, New Concepts in Complexity Theory, 16.

8. Ibid.

9. Howard Davis, The Culture of Building (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Davis defines a

building culture as the coordinated system of knowledge, rules, procedures, and habits that sur-

rounds the building process in a given place and time, (p. 5). See also pp. 1617 on permanence and

change and pp. 23538 on what Davis calls urban craftsmanship.

10. International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS),The Venice Charter: International Charter

for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (Venice: ICOMOS, 1964) (available online

at http://www.icomos.org/charters/venice_e.pdf). In the United States, the governing document is

the Secretary of the Interiors Standards for Rehabilitation, first published in 1977 and last revised in1995 (available online at: http://www.nps.gov/hps/tps/standguide/rehab/rehab_standards.htm). The

Standards require new work at historic sites to be both differentiated from the historic material

and compatible with it; this has been widely interpreted as a mandate for a contrasting modernist

style for additions and infill projects.

11. For example, see projects approved by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission,

including Hearst Tower (David Dunlap, Landmarks Group Approves Bold Plan for Hearst Tower,

New York Times, 28 November 2001); the Brooklyn Museum (Clem Labine, Insidious Impacts of

Standard 9, available online at http://traditional-building.com/clem_labine/?p364), a new town-

house adjacent to the Links Club (David Dunlap, Plan for Site of 06 Blast on East Side is Criticized,

New York Times, 18 August 2007), and a Tribeca infill facade (Branden Klayko, Parametric Tribeca

House Clears Preservation Hurdle, Architects Newspaper Blog, available online at http://blog.archpa

per.com/wordpress/archives/15775).

12. See Steven W. Semes, The Future of the Past: A Conservation Ethic for Architecture, Urbanism, and

Historic Preservation (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2009); Clem Labine, Preserving Historic Con-

text,Traditional Building24, no. 5 (October 2011); John Cluver, Preserving Tradition, Period Homes

10, no. 4 (July 2009), and David Brussat, The Hypocrisy of Additions Old and New, Providence

Journal(18 February 2011).

13. David Mayernik, Timeless Cities (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2003), 46. See also Richard

Krautheimer,Rome: Profile of a City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). A case history of

medieval transformation of a Roman site is offered in Roberto Meneghini and Riccardo Santangeli

Valenzani, I Fori Imperiali: gli scavi del Commune di Roma 19912007, (Rome: Viviani Editore, 2007),

11462.

14. See Rafaello Sanzio and Baldassare Castiglionis letter to Leo X, circa 1519, decrying the ongoing

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destruction of ancient buildings in Rome, published in Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks,Palladios Rome

(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), 17792. The systematic destruction of ancient

Roman structures for their materials continued into the early nineteenth century.

15. Alberti,On the Art of Building, 31819. Note that Alberti did not always follow adaptive principles:

for the Tempio Malatestiano at Rimini he encased the preexisting Gothic church in a new classical

envelope, itself left incomplete.

16. The great exception, of course, is Michelangelos work at the Basilica di San Pietro, where he erased

virtually all visible evidence of his predecessors design.17. James S. Ackerman,The Architecture of Michelangelo(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 181.

18. Ibid., 179.

19. Ibid., 144.

20. A similar argument could be made in the case of Borromini, whose reputation for for mal innovation

has similarly obscured recognition of his adaptation of ancient Roman architecture, especially of the

Hadrianic era. His place-sensitive interventions at the Palazzo della Sapienza, the Oratorio dei Filip-

pini, and even San Martino al Cimino, where he completed a Gothic church in the same style, demon-

strate an adaptive attitude toward the preexisting fabric.

21. For a discussion of the scenographic approach to city design, see Kostof,The City Shaped, 20940.

22. Joseph Connors, Alliance and Enmity in Roman Baroque Urbanism,Romisches Jahrbuch der Biblio-

theca Hertziana[09407855] 25 (1989): 20794.

23. Gustavo Giovannoni, Vecchie citta ed edilizia nuova (Torino: Unione Tipografica Editrice Torinese,

1931), 183.

24. Spiro Kostof, The Third Rome 18701930: Traffic and Glory (Berkeley: University of California Art

Museum, 1973), 18.

25. Carlo Ceschi, Teoria e stroria del restauro (Rome: Mario Bulzoni Editore, 1970), 114. For more recent

commentary on the Vatican Borghi and the spina, see Leonardo Benevolo, San Pietro e la cittadi Roma

(Bari: Laterza, 2004), and Paolo Marconi,Il recupero della bellezza (Milano: Skira, 2005).

26. Giovannoni,Vecchie cittaed edilizia nuova,254. Authors translation.

27. Giovannoni was the author of the master plan for Citta Giardino Aniene and clearly influenced that

of the Garbatella district. Architects collaborating on these projects included Innocenzo Sabbatini,

Quadrio Pirani, Camillo Palmerini, Plinio Marconi, and Gian Battista Trotta. For an overview of Italian

architecture and urbanism in the early twentieth century, see Terry Kirk,The Architecture of Modern

Italy, vol. 2 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005). For Garbatella, see Antonella Bonavita,

Piero Fumo, and Mara Paola Pagliari, La Garbatella: Guida allarchitettura moderna (Rome: Palombi

Editori, 2010). The rich legacy of the ICP has only recently begun to attract the sympathetic interest

of Italian scholars and critics; for example, see Simona Benedetti Simona, Contaminazione di tradizi-

one e modernitanei quartieri popolari a Roma: 19201930, in Larchitettura dell altra modernita:

Atti del XXVI Congresso di storia dellarchitettura, eds. Docci Marina and Maria Grazia Turco (Rome:

Gangemi Editore, 2010).

28. See Richard Etlin, Modernism in Italian Architecture 18901940 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), and

Dennis Doordan,Building Modern Italy: Italian Architecture 19141936(New York: Princeton Architec-tural Press, 1988), as well as Kirk, The Architecture of Modern Italy.

29. Giovannoni,Il quartiere romano del rinascimento (Rome: Edizioni Della Bussola, 1946), 98. Authors

translation.

30. The primary text for this new view was Cesare Brandi, Teoria del restauro (Turin: Giulio Einaudi

Edizioni, 2000). First published in Turin in 1963. For a recent Italian critique of Brandis views, see

Marconi,Il recupero della bellezza, especially pp. 2829 and 7882.

31. Museo dei Mercati Traianei, restored and with new elements, 20052007; Palazzo delle Esposizioni

by Pio Piacentini, 187882, remodeled and with an addition by Firouz Galdo, Paolo Desideri, and

Michele De Lucchi, 2003; Palazzo dei Conservatori, part of the Musei Capitolini, remodeled to designs

by Michelangelo, 1533, with additions completed in 2006 by Carlo Aymonino.

32. Piero Ostilio Rossi,Roma: Guida allarchitettura moderna 19092000 (Rome: Laterza, 2005), 4.

33. Francesca Oddo, Architettura progetti: il museo trasgressivo, Exhibart, 15 January 2004 (http://

www.exibart.com/Print/notizia.asp?IDNotizia8913&IDCategoria54).

7/25/2019 2.2.semes

19/19

34. Ibid.

35. Fabrizio Manzari, Roma, MACRO: Dietro il progetto,Sguardo Contemporaneo, 29 May 2010 (http://

sgaurdocontemporaneo.it/index.php?optioncom_content&viewarticle&id60:speciale-roma-

macro-anteprima-dei-nuovi-spazi&catid41:giugno1&Itemid2).

36. See publication of the Unione Militare project at http://archiwatch.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/cal

zeareteperlunionemilitare-sembraunavecchiabagascia/comment-10823.

37. See Paul Spencer Byard,The Architecture of Additions (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1998), and Fred

Bland, Designing for the Urban Context: Exploring How Healthy Differentiation Becomes ErodedCharacter, a paper presented at the Association for Preservation Technology (APT) International

Conference, Galveston, Texas, November 4, 2004. Carlo Scarpas creative demolition and abstract

reconfiguration of the Castelvecchio of Verona (195773) is frequently cited as inspiration by archi-

tects who seek to confront traditional architecture with contrasting modernist forms and materials.

See Francesco Dal Co and Giuseppe Mazzariol, Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Works (New York: Rizzoli,

1985), 15963; Byard, The Architecture of Additions, 2529; and Pamela Whitney Hawkes, Is Less

More? Twentieth-Century Design Attitudes and Twenty-First-Century Preservation, in Design and

Historic Preservation: The Challenge of Compatibility, eds. David Ames and Richard Wagner (Newark:

University of Delaware Press, 2009), 11317.

38. For an important early critique of modernist conservation policies, see David Watkin, Morality and

Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). More recent critiques are available in Matthew

Hardy, ed., The Venice Charter Revisited: Modernism, Conservation and Tradition in the Twenty-First

Century (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), which includes papers pre-

sented at the conference sponsored by the International Network for Traditional Building, Architec-

ture, and Urbanism (INTBAU) in Venice, November 2006. See also Semes, The Future of the Past, and

Steven W. Semes, New Buildings Among Old: Historicism and the Search for an Architecture of Our

Time, American Arts Quarterly25, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 819. For an Italian perspective, see Marconi,

Il recupero della bellezza, especially pp. 2829, 5660, and 7882. In an interview published in the first

number of this journal, Francesco Siravo called for conservation without using willfully contrasting

elements; see Historic Cities and their Survival in a Globalized World: An Interview with Francesco

Siravo,Change Over Time1, no. 1 (spring 2011): 11028.39. Among the more visible examples are: additions to the French Senate in rue de Vaugirard, Paris, by

Christian Langlois, 196574; Casa Chueca, Seville, by Rafael Manzano Martos, 197375; addition to

the Frick Collection, New York, by Harry van Dyke, Frederick Poehler, and John Barrington Bayley,

1977; new block on the rue de Laeken, Brussels, by Gabriele Tagliaventi and others, 198995; Paul

Cushman Financial Center, Washington, D.C., by John Blatteau Architects, 198997; Baker Street

Buildings, London, by Quinlan & Francis Terry Architects, 20012002; 5 East 95th Street, New York

by Zivkovic Connolly Architects with John Simpson & Partners, 20022005; Spangler Campus Center

and addition to Baker Library, Harvard Business School, Boston, Mass., by Robert A. M. Stern Archi-

tects, 20012005; Whitman College at Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., by Demetri Porphyrios

Architects, 2004; 198202 Piccadilly, London, by Robert Adam Architects, 2007; and Ralph Lauren

Flagship Store, Madison Avenue, New York, by Weddle Gilmore Black Rock Studio/HS2 Architecture,

2010.

40. See additional student projects with commentary by Paolo Marconi, Ettore Maria Mazzola, Pietro

Pagliardini, Nikos A. Salingaros, and Stefano Serafini in Il Covile, no. 630, 18 February 2011 (available

online at http://www.ilcovile.it/scritti/COVILE_630_via_Giulia.pdf).

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