GENERATIVE ART 1999

II International Conference and Exhibition

Faculty of Architecture

Politecnico of Milan

1/2/3 December 1999

 

abstract                                                                                        by          Piero Meogrossi

 

 ROME AS A GENERATIVE CITY

After having spent many years researching the topographical connections in the city and between the monumental sites and the main architectures of Rome (Palatino, Coliseum, ancient Appia are the areas where he works as director of restoration for the Rome Soprintendenza Archeologica) architect Piero Meogrossi confirms his thesis about a strategic direction orienting a geomanthic dynamism which drives generating shapes for the urban growth.

 

An axis used as measuring unit for topographic planning dominates the hidden town design, a generative system based on a  virtual matrix which made functional the several  urban plans and whose commun identity is astronomically and symbolically subordered by the position of the sun accorded to Rome dies natalis, the famous April XXI connected with the Romulus age (753 b.C.) for designing of “Roma Quadrata”: that matrix comes from a sunset morning when all the planets, sun and moon included, appeared on the same line over the horizon of the city.

 

A bird’s eye view over the archeological territories let the legendary and historical tales connected to the main monuments of Rome whose architectonic geometrical centers become instrumental main points to control, tune and dominate a DNA topographical codex represented by that symbolical direction (18° 37’ E-NE) which the romans used to control the measures coming from the sky and to drive their planning over the earth fixing knot positions to protect the environment.

 

An utopian reconstruction plan of the “solar-city” has confirmed the quality of the project by the Sixthus Vth, the XVII century pope who acting as a new Romulus wanted to create a new town design with the dynamic shape of the roman antiquities, a “generative-net-city” whose infrastructures (obelisks ,streets, etc.) can show the value of that ancient topographical axis marking many ages with the center of the octagonal labyrinth in the middle of Palatino, the center of Costantino’s arch, the center of Coliseum, the center of the octagonal hall in the Nero’s golden kingdom………..and so on..

 

The modern Rome as a historical town which has influenced the western culture, needs to discover again and organize those physical memories of antiquities in the hidden urban shapes offering new identities and opportunities for future plans and projects, but only if the roman acting for globalization will be driven into a localisation digital production manageable by an utopian vision as a 200mt. Colonna Esquilina, the project accorded to the above mentioned shapes which was granted the Utopia prize in a national competition on Rome for the third millennium (light-ways to rediscover Sixthus Vth  plan).

 

 

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titolo                            The net generative system

(design by P. Meogrossi)

 

 

THE IDEA OF ROME:  THE SHAPE OF UTOPIA

 

The desire to pass over the incompleteness of the historian research about the shape of ancient city forces the cultural themes of this end millennium characterized by an uncontrolled world growth, a plurality of subjects which raise objections in finding a common understanding useful to move organic strategies for discovering again the complexity of ancient natural phenomena.

 

The global village contradictions told by McLuhan’s theory put in evidence homologated needs only, desires pulsed by frenetic collective actions damn the private and public life busy to miss its quality and to lie apart instead of researching comparison with the antiquity, a sort of reaction against the past times pushes many people to contrast the history forgetting progressively to practice their dreams and ideals for maintaining an active memory.

 

The natural reaction of the common behavior is to increase a mind laziness and even if somebody try to let world free by “extreme visions” the difficulty to practise them push back their sense of history, the roots themselves stimulate reactions and dynamic tensions which preserve carefully the immediate surviving and do not suggest new models of growth, especially in the urban territories where the civis aeconomicus is surviving, an economical citizen who is looking for how to become rich without any care to have places structured by different dignities unconscious to share his life in a collective limited communion.

 

Values apparently overpassed but subordinated to the past cultural codes, ancient needs influenced by natural rules must be tuned again to recompose an ” opened net“ for an urban shape which must be manageable rightly to the third millennium projects to restore in its fundaments the future city; the globalisation actions must understand the values of the old materials of design composition before arranging the new instruments, tools conditioned by infinitive signals, impossible time measures which must recover the finished lived space.

 

If we consider the example of a modern musical expression as the long time series of the 24hours by the French composer Satie we can comparison the all day long rhythm with the modern society which has never a moment to take a rest, never a touch to get a border to stop, but infinite measures catching the extension space often privated of its historical time control; so every instant contains richness of messages but not any right measured dimension useful to the people to do not lose the illusion they can get new standards.

 

For these reasons we must learn to distinguish again the ancient measures connected to the temporary daily life time, moments recognizable by listening the interior sounds, the rhythms useful to get back an objective consciousness which can overpasses the homologated behaviours and let the hidden historical shapes discovered again by forgotten archetypes which once controlled the city space-time.

 

Through the human experiences - the natural measures recognized over the territories by music for instance – we can find shapes opened to a sort of convivium with differences, old needs and new dialogues accorded to natural sounds reproducing the measures of every birthday, regenerating measures for planning instruments whose generative values are never disappeared but hidden inside the territory history, into a less or more ancient town design representing the meaning for an architecture thought to help the physical body, a net-city put in order and composed by natural and symbolical matrix and grids to fix originally an urban model.

 

Here we want to show how to reuse such ancient generative methods promoting a discussion about our topographical and projectual research dealing with the Rome town design, a city influenced by the sky and the earth laws, obviously not having forgotten the scientific data we have got about the Roma Quadrata, the legendary squared geometry of the foundation studied but not solved by eminent world archeologists.

 

Our tale starts out from the expression of lucus a (non) lucendo, the Heidegger lichtung, the philosophical energy which lights the remembering of the original lucus to disveil it again, in our case the “holy wood” planted on the center of the Palatino hill of Rome, a geographical dominion from where we can have a 360 degrees observation of the sky, a natural platform of the past times where to get calculations together the natural earth resources, all instruments useful to put in order the main point structure of the city on which later romans will erect their monuments.

 

The recognizing of a specific topographical grid put in evidence the main points line progression overcrossing several roman vallies by the series of the geometric centers of the monuments marking at different ages always the same knots just to link Palatino to the hills around; a determined structured direction which became for the Romans unity method to organize their territories, a generative virtual planning to relate places to the sun season position and imitating an astronomical sunset connection between all the planets, sun and moon included: that rare event we think was observed and cloned the first time at the date of April 21, the Rome birthday of 753 b. C, at the moment of the legendary foundation of the city.

 

(See historical and astronomical reports by P. Meogrossi 1993 and P. Battinelli 1999).

 

That incredible astronomical position of planets had to influence the topographical town design developed to act through roman hills an interconnected “measurable concert”, a series of infinite sounds accorded along that line progression, a “golden measured virtual Axis” able to cross the territory evidences organizing first symbolisms and monumental areas around Palatino and conquering a later sequence of territorial circle crowns, empty spaces filled in different ages to maintain and improve that special attitude for controlling the sun-light: the importance to give a real order to the human rhythms of course moved with the necessity of keeping secret the deep reasons of that ancient shape.

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Titolo:                           Study for the symbolism of the Palatino main points

                           (design by P.Meogrossi)

The ancient master plan put in evidence how the generative astronomical matrix was transformed into that Axis, a decumanus for the city every time structuring physically and virtually monuments planted as a growth law, a generative attitude to realize a continuous expansion maintaining the former organism with its quantitative and qualitative values: in such manner the lichtung, after being started from the initial condition of an absolute darkness, unveils the plan shapes showing the quality of a light different which more and more increases the choice and the forms of the urban architecture.

 

The clearness of the first knot geometry planted lights the less visible areas of the urban stage and preserves the urban labyrinth codex, the unique instrument to practice consciously every new births manageable under the guide of space-time rituals (the ceremonies for the ancient hierogamyc meetings between man and gods), ancient local functions, traditions and laws to reuse for a modern society which by right adjustments has to preserve the environment to-day.

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Titolo:                    The lichthung over Palatino hill and the Colossum measured point

                            (design by P. Meogrossi)

 

After the unlimited expansion of the urban space-time that generative design can learn the modern scientists to practise with that ancient “know how” for balancing better territorial energies but only after having understood the complexity of our historical unidentified territories they could improve their restoration moving through a modern digital communication planned over those past techniques and experiences to be transformed into civil actions to share with public and private operators.

 

The Babel tower dream of the Genesis tale (11, 1-9) is remembering us the unity of space, of time, of architecture, categories necessary to a human kind who yet has to consider his history as a critical representation of an uninterrupted past: as in the dreams we remember at the morning so the history is alive until when we are able to reconstruct it by sewing the main moments of our dream, until when we can model on that tale designed the residuals to compose them again in a new generating grid hopefully manageable in a place where to give confront with the complexity of the shapes invented for an exchanging language able to support the communication between us and the other people.

 

Generative shapes are then necessary…...to not lose our way on the earth as the nomadic people told in the babelic tale but to not suffer solitude in our expanded world as they did but to require indispensable formers for giving balance to the men behaviour who desire to find reasons and symbols for living together in a place organized as museum of modernity, in the lost reconverted topos similarly to those ancient temples where it was possible to meditate on spiritual and natural needs thinking to be nearest to gods just observing the natured measures.

 

Only a generative former matrix of continuity coming from the past times and moving towards the future let the historical foundation segments recognized as part of an unitary urban shape, only the recognized main points over which to erect new monuments for the cultural modernity let the collectivity act for a nova forma urbis project driving the communion of different dialects and preserving the identity of Rome, the solar city founded for the hope to have utopia.

 

After the beginning of new millennium Romans and Romei, the jubilee pilgrims, will have to find special fascination in this urban complexity whose shapes will be displayed going upon the Colonna Esquilina, a 200 hundred meters tower to erect on the Esquilino hill, a place in which and from which they will have emotions admiring physically and mentally the large and unity view of a city whose architectonic dominions confirm the XVII century urban shape got by the pope Sixthus Vth and his architect Fontana.

 

That famous tridenta plan wanted to organize the top places and show them by a new triangulated communication system for the city and pilgrim life, many axis interconnected each other and related to obelisks erected on the seven hills to recompose around the meaning of the antiquities, a modernity project for maintaining the lights and the shadows of the roman history structured as generative model net along the famous axis connecting the monumental main points (center of Palatino, center of Costantino’s arch, center of Coliseum, center of neronian kingdom octagonal hall, …and so on !).

 

At the moment Rome will decide to erect in the middle of this town a “babelic monument” to celebrate his history we think it would be important to look at an “ancient but modern obelisk” so to offer everybody a world cultural dignity by transforming the utopian vision into a collecting disappeared message useful to the western society, to promote an infinite series of concrete actions for studying the deep meanings of the urban shape of Rome, to react the progressive degradation giving hopes to a cultured civis cyberneticus (the third millennium digital man who has to share his space-time with a more and more increasing unknown).

 

The recognized genius loci will give Rome the opportunity to export culture and economies in the world around without abandoning suburban areas which would like to share the same idea of town of their historical center, hopefully looking at an high and far “sistin obelisk”, a light tower by which people can understand more about their historical spaces, a signal to contrast the degraded environment.

 

Such a light-tower will be monument for the third millennium to light all the city so to develop the several knots of the historical levels, symbols to plan the infinite tale for a living city, an urban shape manageable by a machina memoriae urbis, an architecture hold up for regenerating the measured complexities read through the history of the sky and the earth and able to put in evidence, from the center until the extreme borders of the world globe, the value and necessity to invest better on the archeological sites.

 

After having recognized those places as the main points for every urban renewal it will be easier to remember the virtual line, axis for the city of Janus, the ancient god of the beginning, topographical measure which was connected to a specific sunset day in the season of the dies natalis urbis when an exceptional astronomical event supported and organized the cross urban design.

 

We believe Sixthus Vth, the last roman spirit heir who become pope the April XXI of the gregorian calendar, hopefully transformed the old Rome into a master plan  celebrating the Mary’s catholic cult but selecting the Esquilino dominions around his villa Peretti as symbolical focus, new directions to develop a new  control over the hills well knowing to reuse he ancient connections of the ancient urban grid.

 

That roman decumanus crossing the archeological central area since less than 3000 years and “transporting” the center of Palatino to the main directions so to order the octagonal geometry with the ancient via Lata (the modern via del Corso) creating a roman cross which had to dialogue with the design of sistin via Felicia: the two coclid columns (Trajana and Antonina) remain border signals of a defined topographical campus relating with other important monuments of the city and representing the generative software easy to reuse for a different plan at the moment to remove, for example, the ancient pagan gods with the christian statues of  s. Paul and s. Peter.

 

So the topographical references of the sistin plan were organized on a generative codex structured as a former trident able to give infinite opportunities to create perspectives, shapes without any end useful to realize an organic city, forgotten meanings of signals for a mankind lived between sky and earth when it was possible to transform a natural platform into a rational measurable place, that central area of Palatine whose center was occupied by the flavian labyrinth closed to the Augustus’s house, the imperial mediatheca where to think of a wide communication towards every direction of Rome: there an augustan fresco showing a mysterious bètile (obelisk), instrument invented to put under control the energies of environment, reminds to the orientations used by Romans at the moment of the renovatio urbis augustea, of the neronian golden kingdom, of the flavian valley of Coliseum, of the adrian transformations of the Velia hill, of the severian Settizodio as Palatino gate,..….and so on.

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Titolo                           The age flavian valley: a study  for organizing the forma urbis

  (design by P. Meogrossi)

In practice a generative prototype, the former calculations over the environment around, becomes virtual vector of energy, designer tool by which can be driven the urban measures developing needs and functions, set above the main monuments in the city managed after having submitted the whole territory to a specific sun-orientation; by such operation we can recognize  more easily any space-time position to let clearest the architectonic meanings of the ancient roman territory, a city founded at a day near by the April XXI reproducing an holy orientation we name Axis Paliliae from Pales, the Rome foundation sheep-rearing goddess remembered by the historiographer Varrone, a measure composed and related to the environment winning-posts as mount Mario, mount Soratte, Campidoglio hill, Palatine hill, the straight Appia way.

 

So many interconnected references would have produced many different shapes according the environment to astronomical calculations (we should speak of astrology discipline remembering the ancient world!) but all of them set on aim of handing down to posterity Rome, weaving a plot to set in order the space-time warp of the city: after these reasonings we have to have new scientific approach to monuments as those campo Marzio sundial, ara pacis, meta sudans, Coliseum, Adonaea gardens, Pantheon, Settizodio, etc..

 

Thanking to that discovered axis we can give now more reflections over the via Felicia wanted by Sixthus Vth, a trident shape with via Lata in the middle and two border directions defining the whole city campus enrolled by the architect Fontana, a generative master plan exported into the European culture of XVII century; at the main time we have to reconsider the value of the sistin obelisk connections to think more to the generative calculations accorded to the equinoctial axis over the city (as East-West virtual infrastructure), links to exchange information from the past times and to call up again the “golden rules” hidden in the ancient topography of Rome based on the templum coelestis of Palatino, the first circular crown reproducing the laws of the sky, a primitive lucus measured to give order to a first trident shape  driven later to move the generative acts for this solar-city.

 

These meditations about Rome and many other theoretical considerations drawn studying directly the roman territory are belonging to our personal research and they are going to be investigated by the wise archeological academy which is reflecting on these “generative” criteria for the forma urbis; but after having studied the archeological pattern in the counter-reformation sistin master plan we think useful to show more than an urban design interrupted its consolidated generative program, the know how of an urban history transported from the past not evidently but open as former document to a future which must preserve such identity, maybe in the vain illusion to know the lost shape of the city and to get a modern communication of utopia.

 

More we research and more we will have to study to let clearest this topographical interconnected  shapes which drive the reconstruction design for the forma urbis Romae sure that only a generative adventure can let us understood the historical value for such natural game without any ending solution.

 

We hope everybody, maybe after this international conference, can reflect about the deeper meanings of Rome shape but just to think of them as an utopia place reconquered to get the reality of a business plan useful for erecting the babelic vision of the “eternal city” where to collect together the metaphysics of lighting with the monumental testimonies to rise up again unexpected resources, physical  matters of an universal patrimony which need to be protected not only by scientific arguments but even alchemist tales as those told on the stones of the magic gate of Piazza Vittorio: historical memories and mnemotechnic games need to be reconciled with the history and to invent the cyberspace communication for the new generations in the future polis.

 

The generative literary research and the graphic production can delineate moreover the financial plan moving from the conception of glocalisation (global+ local), a new productive formula for a future world market which must act in tune with the local realities so to generate records, intellectual and economical researches and civil actions depending on the roman public company for the millennium tower whose main partners would be the roman citizen themselves as it happened at the moment of realizing the sistin plan for Rome when a political enterprise changed the Rome shape and, example for to-morrow, transformed a middle age historical territory into a communicative and productive plan.

 

The tales written upon a “lighted utopian” architecture can be associated to the conflict coming from the contrasts of different historical dialects rediscovered without imposing typological dominions, without organizing space fictions influenced by involute “megamachines” as that S. Latouche’s social theory which after the declaration to celebrate symbolically the urban continuity are inadequate to the modern mass phenomena, disturb the unitary character of the actions undertaken and above all, being conditioned by limited economical analysis, are not able to create neither real advantages nor protection for the cultural goods.

 

New financial strategies based on the add values coming out from the anthropological studies of the revisited territories can give character of continuity to the generative tale for Rome that meanwhile can bring into new equilibrium the public with the private roles, civil actions and business-plan coming directly from the synchronic and diachronic urban space-time interpretation so to get benefits and enjoyment, in other terms the sequences legible of the collective memory will be useful to investigate the cultural symbolisms organized through the cultural conversion of the digital economy.

 

The Esquiline Column

(design by P. Meogrossi)

 

So a monumental museum will get place in Rome near by Termini station on an area geologically tested and dominating the city from the Esquilino hill as thought by architect Fontana in his sistin plan, a symbolic image almost invisible from the inside of the historical center – strong vision if observing from the far suburbs around – , a fusiform skyscraper architecture shaped on the design and the symbols taken from the augustan fresco of Palatino, an esoteric message directly from the marquis Palombara’s Magician Gate yet present in the place.

 

And then this architecture generated to light a “neo-ancient culture” over Rome and in the world (a Communication Pole on its side will mark the big measure of such intention) will attend to restore the degradation of the site, memory witness for the ancient Mecenate’s  tower of the roman Horti Lamiani, a proposal for a local dominion as that ancient Diaeta Apollinis there interred, modern container for the archeological antiquities discovered in the last century and technological monument where to reorder the Archeological Museum placed in the thoroidal circle hypogeum supporting the basement of the big tower.

 

The more the tower will be erected the more will be cleared the concreteness of this utopian project, sign and dream for the new millennium, space of continuity in a city drawn nearer to the fragmentary time dimension, a place where advanced shapes and digital technologies will be shown by the generative method we desire to remodel using different typologies: the Esquiline Thermas in connection with the actual subway and the series of Art Laboratories in the ground floor, the Glocalisation Bridge to get the outside gardens, the Three Continent Plaza River among the pavement, the lofty cave of the Comitium, all meeting spaces sending back to the fourth world people left out from the glocalisation processes.

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titolo:                           The interior Comitium

                           (design by P. Meogrossi)

The three functional Stabilizing Structure Tower for elevators and the 49 Western Society Pillars plant the four corners which suffer inside the spirally wall of Mediatheca where to receive people for gaming cybernetic messages to the outside Squared Terrace dominating the architectural highness and the landscape largeness, an under Lighted Technological Slab in whose thickness will be given hospitality to the technological installations; up there the higher Light- Quiver Tower will mark the roman skyline by a lining light intersection in continuity with the directions of the Axis Urbis and the sistin Felicia way, a symbolic new cross to think of  neo-ancient culture over an urban horizon reconquered after its dramatic XIX-XX century building experience.

 

The interior ascension to the top of the Column moves in the Moon Well Winding through generative air cushions where are deposited the tales of the urban archaic shapes and after having got the center of the fusiform tower people will enter into the spheroid Ancient Sky Museum to know the ancient calendars, the constellations and the planet history related to Rome history; the final going up to the Astrolabe Roof by other elevators is coupled with the series of the leaped Synapsyes – the catalyzers which drive the neuronic brain links for communication - increasing  the perception at the different levels.

 

Over the city-monumental landscape level the outside skin of the tower becomes suddenly transparent shaping a DNA steel structure, a double crossed frame inside assuranced by the quality of blue-technology and lighted daily and nightly, a building program which becomes the initiated way for getting the possible exchange between the city and the citizen memory, between the heaviness of materials and the lightness of thoughts, between the history tale and the virtual communication, between the evidence of a scattered classic codex  and the right of  the man  to have yet a  dream for his future.

 

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Titolo :         The neo-ancient tower for a new Rome town-design

(design by P. Meogrossi & partners)

 
 
 
 
 
Piero Meogrossi

                                                                                                                                        architect in Rome