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Italy’s cultural heritage ministry announced on Friday (May 31) that it would revoke a lease granted to Bannon after reports of fraud in the competitive tender process. The former Breitbart chief and aide to US president Donald Trump was reportedly paying €100,000 ($110,000) per year to rent the 13th Century Carthusian monastery, but now will have to search for another spot. — QZ
What was once the potential site for a training academy for the far-right, the Italian state evicts the conservative Catholic organization Dignitatis Humanae Institute (DHI) due to reports of fraud. According to a recent report from The Economist, institute director Benjamin Harnwell was shocked... View full entry
"Along with their monumental role in Rome's urban fabric, the architectural status of fountains has long been uncertain. It can be hard to determine when they ceased to be viewed as public water utilities, and came to be regarded as purely artistic objects." — Places Journal
In the same week in 2016, a group of tourists were denounced as trespassers for splashing around in one of Rome's historic fountains, while Fendi was praised for its tribute to Italy's artistic legacy by staging a fashion show across another. Anatole Tchikine is prompted by these contrasting... View full entry
After winning the Municipality of Rome's invite-only competition in 2007, architects Maria Claudia Clemente and Francesco Isidori of Labics revitalized a former bus depot at the edge of town into a mixed-use complex called the Città del Sole, or “City of Sun”. Working with local public... View full entry
A multidisciplinary team of researchers from University of Oregon, Stanford and Dartmouth have co-developed a new digital archive. The collection contains nearly 4,000 drawings, prints, paintings and photographs of historic Rome from the 16th to 20th centuries that are now available online to... View full entry
Modern, steel-embedded concrete seawalls tend to need repair after a few decades of erosion from the endless procession of waves, but the Roman pier at Portus Cosanus in Orbetello, Italy has remained solid for almost two thousand years. Scientists have finally figured out the missing ingredient... View full entry
With layered narration from writers and the input of a climate scientist, the 40-foot long table installation known as "Indoor City" designed by Founder Rome Prize Fellows Phu Hoang and Rachely Rotem (MODU) with Jonathan Berger, Hussein Fancy, Christoph Meinrenken, Jack Livings and Matthew... View full entry
Virginia Raggi, who was elected in June and has faced a tumultuous start to her tenure, said in a highly anticipated press conference that it would be irresponsible to move forward with the bid, given the debts that it would accrue and the burdens it would place on Roman taxpayers. [...]
The 38-year-old lawyer said the city was still paying debts it had accrued for the Games in 1960, and would not stand for more “cathedrals in the desert” – abandoned stadiums – that the city could ill afford.
— theguardian.com
Take the Olympics, please!Wilkinson Eyre, designers of Rio's biggest Olympic stadium, reflect on the Games' architectural legacyHow are London's Olympic grounds being used 4 years later?Boston backs out of 2024 Olympics bidJapanese slam highly unpopular Tokyo Olympic Stadium design with hilarious... View full entry
Most Americans know MoMA’s Young Architect’s Program (YAP) through its annual summer festival in the MoMA PS1 courtyard in Long Island City, but they also have an impressive international program. For the Roman edition of the program, this year’s winner, studio Parasite 2.0, installed a... View full entry
...Mussolini, at least for his first decade in power, wasn’t quite as interested in architecture as his fellow dictators. While enthusiastically censoring film-makers, writers, academics and journalists, he let architects do as they please [...]
The resulting architectural output, between Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922 and the late 1930s, when he began to exert more control, embodies an accidentally healthy pluralism.
— The Guardian
"While Hitler rejoiced in the traditional völkisch kitsch of his imaginary master race, and Stalin revelled in over-iced baroque confections, Mussolini sat back and let historicist revivalism compete with the crisp forms of forward-looking modernism."For more on the architecture of... View full entry
Rome has issued a €500m (£380m) SOS to companies, wealthy philanthropists and its own citizens to help restore many of the Italian capital’s historic sites and prevent others from falling into ruin.
The Roman Forum, the Circus Maximus and the walls, aqueducts and sewerage system of what was once the most powerful city on Earth have all been earmarked as needing help ranging from a relatively minor clean up to full-blown structural works.
— the Guardian
"Saddled with debts of some €12bn, Rome cannot afford to do it on its own."Or: in search of noblesse oblige during the age of austerity politics.Of course, Rome isn't the only European city struggling under the weight of debt. Check out these related articles:Tensions build... View full entry
Back in 2004, Elio Ciampanella was evicted from his apartment of three decades...So he applied for an apartment in Rome’s public housing. And he waited. More than a decade passed.
Then, in February, [Ciampanella] unexpectedly had his choice of several apartments. His tale might be considered one of patience rewarded, but there was a twist: It turned out Rome’s municipal government never really had a shortage of properties.
— the New York Times
"Instead, the government actually owned so many thousands of apartments and buildings that no one was quite certain how many there were, who lived in them or where they were. That was, until staff members for Rome’s new interim administrator, Francesco Paolo Tronca, discovered nine boxes... View full entry
While some residents may be more concerned about their overflowing rubbish bins than maintaining ancient monuments, for many the survival of modern Rome will depend on the preservation of the past. — The Guardian
As Rome moves forward without a mayor, the city is taking on the restoration of both the Colosseum and the Porta Maggiore basilica while updating the modern city.More about Rome on Archinect:Was Rome really a "City of Marble"?A breakneck tour of contemporary architecture in RomeContemporary Art... View full entry
Next month, New York-based gallerist Gavin Brown will open a Rome gallery in an unexpected location: an 8th-century church named Sant’Andrea de Scaphis at Via dei Vascellari 69 in the Trastevere neighborhood... “It’s not that I was looking to open a place in Europe. I was looking to open this place in this building,” [said Brown] “I think a lot of people who run the kind of business I run have this real-estate problem...If you see empty buildings, you imagine what could be done there.” — ArtNews
Architectural historian Diane Favro of [UCLA], has employed advanced modeling software to reconstruct the city of Rome in its entirety over the period of the rule of Augustus Caesar, from 44 B.C. to A.D. 14. According to legend, Augustus boasted, “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble”... She found that only a small proportion of the buildings in Augustan Rome were converted from brick to marble, and that they would have been difficult to see from ground level. — archaeology.org
Favro explains that while much of Rome was left untouched by Augustus' urban project, the traffic caused by bringing the large quantities of Carrera marble through the city likely created the illusion "that Rome had been transformed into marble." View full entry
It looks foreboding in pictures, but in reality it’s a lovely, tree-lined complex set at the street level with a string of cafes and shops. — NYT
Sam Lubell traveled to Rome with the proverbial grandparent(s), for some architectural tourism. They visited a church, museums and stadiums, and largely praised the "striking new buildings". View full entry
