Zuppa Romana
Proposal for a Roman villa developed for the exhibition Re-constructivist Architecture.
Zuppa Romana is our personal contribution to the exhibition Re-Constructivist Architecture curated by Jacopo Costanzo and Giovanni Cozzani at Iermonti Galery in New York: the request is a residential project in the Roman countryside. Involving in the exhibition some of the architects who participated to the 1988 MoMA’s show “Deconstructivist Architecture” through their drawings and short essays, the exhibition is attempting to generate a debate between two generation of architects: one who destabilized a certain kind of relationship with the design theory and a new one wishful to get back on the lost way.
Despite its permanence in time as a retreat, the roman countryside developed a diverse array of typologies and expressions: from the clusters of Villa Adriana to Casa-Albero's shells to recent urban speculations, its variety reflects the changes that the city itself and its manifold society faced through history. The project has to be considered itself as an homage to all this different approaches to the design a roman Villa. The ninfeum is merged with spherical capsule, concrete structural beems are cutting portoghesi rounded facade in a composition that wants to strenghten some peculiar elements of different projects merging them thogeter in a new form. Zuppa Romana is indeed our fresco of the city of Rome itself, emphasizing beyond good and evil its wrinkled and yet immortal charm.
