Contextual Studies

Contemporary Roman Architecture

Tour with Tom Rankin

ABOUT TOM RANKIN

Tom Rankin came to Rome in 1991 on a Fulbright fellowship in architecture. With a masters in architecture from Harvard's Graduate School of Design, he has worked with a variety of top Italian architecture firms, including that of Massimiliano Fuksas.
In 1996 he started Scala Reale as a non-profit cultural association of scholars and professionals in Rome who, among other things, led didactic itineraries for English-speaking visitors. After growing that organization, in January 2004 he merged Scala Reale with Context:Rome. He continues to serve as docent/scholar and lead itineraries for Context:Rome. He also runs the American Institute for Roman Culture where he teaches architecture.
Tom lives in Rome with his wife, Lucia and their two sons, John and Daniel.
- excerpt taken from: http://rome.contexttravel.com/static/about_us.php

THEMES

Culture

Outside of the city centre of Rome exists areas that are often overlooked and unnoticed by tourists, and often by locals as well. Recently however, there have been a number of projects and development to revive the areas that have been abandoned or forgotten, in an attempt to bring new social and cultural uses to these buildings and neightborhoods. We visited a few new areas on the tours we went through with Tom Rankin and Scott Schlimgen.

The areas of Ostiense and Testaccio played key roles in Rome's industrial history and development, hosting a variety of factories and buildings that emptied out as Rome modernized. These areas now contain museums, plans for theatres and cultural activities, and a vibrant youth culture that exists at night in the nightclubs of the areas. The plans of a renewed area, one that celebrates the rich historical past while providing a modern environment, hopes to bring in people from the city to this area. During Scotts tour, we visited the music hall auditoriums of architect Renzo Piano, another site that hopes to attract people in the neighborhood. Across from the auditoriums, a housing development left over from the 1960 Olympics is yet another area being planned for an urban and cultural renewal.

Layers

One of the major important themes of the tour was the idea of layers. Rome is a city of layers, both historically and literally in the form of ancient cities and ruins that exist beneath the streets. These layers have been built on top of each other over thousands of years, resulting in buried ruins waiting to be uncovered. The importance of these tours helped us understand the layer system of Rome, while giving insight on what shaped modern Rome, what has changed, and how the city is moving forward culturally and architecturally.

Furthermore, there is a challenge in building new developments in Rome, and in a way that enables the layered history come through. Tom Rankin mentions Rome as a city that can rest on the architecture that exists while having the luxury of building something experimental in architecture, an example being the new Rem Koolhass project in the Mercati Generali.