GENERATIVE ART 1999
Faculty of
Architecture
Politecnico of
Milan
1/2/3 December 1999
abstract
by Piero Meogrossi
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 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)
architect in Rome