“If we were to map our cities today, showing not the walls and envelopes, but rather the artificially conditioned, climate-controlled (primarily interior) spaces versus the un-conditioned (exterior) context, we would see as striking a dichotomy of figure-ground as we see in Nolli's eighteenth-century map. When we look at the city not as public versus private space, but as conditioned versus unconditioned space, the surfaces and geometries of architecture are often coincident with and responsible for fortifying these boundaries. Yet as cities vent their infrastructural exhaust, buildings release energy dumps from mechanical systems, and air conditioning spills from commercial spaces onto streets and plazas, it is apparent that this dichotomy is less clear, requiring a gradient reading and mapping of these spaces so they can become design initiatives. These materials can transcend simply being byproducts and spills and instead become initiatives for our public spaces throughout the twelve months.”
Current
Rome Prize Fellows and Projects
The American Academy in Rome awards the Rome Prize to a select group of artists and scholars, after an application process that begins in the fall of each year. The winners, announced in the spring, are invited to Rome to pursue their work in an atmosphere conducive to intellectual and artistic freedom, interdisciplinary exchange, and innovation. The 2011-12 Rome Prize winners are listed here with a brief project summary in their own words.
To download the brochure from the Rome Prize Ceremony held in New York on 13 April, 2011, announcing the 2011-2012 Rome Prize winners click here.
Landscape Architecture
“Landscape Architects provide a fundamental design and coordination role in the transformative process of land reclamation. While mined terrains are most commonly thought of as environmental problems, they raise a host of social, economic and legal issues. Quarries have played a key role in the establishment of settlements, and are a source of commercial trade, whether limestone (for cement and other products), uranium, or marble, among many other elements. For the Roman (Italian) culture, the Carrara quarries hundreds of miles north of Rome come to mind. But just east of the city, several significant sites exist which deserve to be studied for their potential transformation from a productive landscape of extraction to a productive landscape of extraction and replenishment. One of those sites, the Guidonia quarry, will serve as the focus of my study.”
