Raumgestaltung RWTH - Learning from Pompeii (View from the North)

Learning from Pompei – View from the north

ERASMUS+ KA 131 Blended Intensive Program

Department of Spatial Design, RWTH Aachen University

a project by Uwe Schröder, Nicola Carofiglio, Franziska Kramer with Jakob Lenke, Konstantin Overdiek, Maximilian Rapp, Georges Reiser, Tim Schell, Johanna Waechter

Five Parts toward a City of Spaces

Five Pompeiian houses were documented by Fausto and Felice Nicolini in four volumes in 1854, along with their ornaments, temples and other monuments. Five Pompeiian houses serve as the foundation for an initial discussion concerning the concept of a city of spaces, and explore the spatial imagination associated with the idea of the city in which society reflects itself.

Five Pompeian houses stage different ‘rituals’ of living, within a common idea of inhabiting the house and the city: Casa dei Capitelli colorati and its linear walk across three open spaces, Casa del Fauno with the openness of its vast colonnade courtyard, Casa del Poeta tragico and its defined collective and private spaces, Casa detta della seconda Fontana and the act of collecting water from the fountain in the courtyard, Casa di Sirico where spaces revolve around a centre – different spatial experiences are inherently related to the different spatial constellations of these houses.

By interpreting these houses and their distinctive characters, five dual terms (dyads) have been first defined to describe and accentuate ideas before their form: introverted/extroverted, natural/ cultural, open/closed, representative/non-representative, vertical/horizontal. Additionally, five types, namely “tower”, “block”, “island”, “villa” and “borgo” are associated with each of these houses. Existing elements undergo transformations that amplify their inherent characters when linking abstract themes and urban paradigms. These analogical transformations test limits and possibilities of ‘the’ model Pompeiian Domus, as well as individual typological and spatial characters of these specific five houses. As a reductio ad absurdum, this inductive process aims to demonstrate the timelessness of urban principles for the contemporary city. Although referring to a specific idea of a dense per-insulae city, the a-topical nature of the exercise broadens the possibilities for these transformed Pompeiian houses to generate other imagined urban structures or confront themselves with the landscape. Each transformation embeds within itself urban aspirations: the house as a city, the city as a house. Thus, the analogical Casa dei Capitelli colorati block and Casa del Fauno island assume the dimension of the Pompeiian insula and aspire to an urban texture of courtyard blocks, or to emerging complex buildings and freed objects in Nature. Casa del Poeta tragico-tower and Casa detta della seconda Fontana villa evoke cities of singularities: a turreted city and a garden city. Casa di Sirico borgo, displaced into an imaginary countryside, still yearns to group together to form a rural settlement – or start a city.

Five parts toward a city of spaces proposes to understand the transformations of the five houses as a foundation for the design of five quarters based upon their immanent spatial characters. These five quarters evolve alongside the archeological buffer zone which serves as a park with pine trees between the ancient city and the contemporary one. Thus, these two interventions, the park and the five quarters, address the spatial mediation between two understandings of the city: the city of interiority or the city of exteriority. The five parts aim to define both, “the interior“ and “the exterior“, designing a city of spaces which is rooted in the history of a place and its ideas.

Veranstaltung: Learning from Pompeii (View from the North)
Anmerkung/en: Erasmus+ KA131 Blended Intensive Programme
Ort: Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy
Datum: 23-07-2023 - 29-07-2023

News: Learning from Pompeii (view from the North). The ancient urban form for the future city – Erasmus+ KA131 Blended Intensive Program, Houses and the Analogy. Learning from Pompeii, Workshop in Naples, DiARC Dipartimento di Architettura of the Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”
Module: Forschungsfeld Pompeji
Mitarbeit: Franziska Kramer, Nicola Carofiglio
Schriften: Five Pompeiian Houses as Urban Ideas, Five Parts Toward a City of Spaces