Ruins and city. Procedure suggestion for the Imperial Forums of Rome

Abstract

[EN] The actual area of the Imperial Forums is presented as a big urban void in which the scale of the city has been lost. A "no man's land", inhospitable, to which you could assign the qualifying of "non-place". A huge and fragmented "archaeological park" in which the observer is not able of relate the rests and recognise the trace of the ancient forums. This problems have been adressed within the framework of the "Workshop of Conservation and Intervention" of the MCPA Master of the UPV, in which have been suggested differente strategies, both of search of the sewn of the city, and of the recognition of the different historical stratums existing on the place. To the same extent, this topic has been an international contest object, on which the proposal we have presented comes from a “modern” attitude, that helps us going beyond the evocative power of the ruin, or from its value as a referent from the past. An attitude which seeks to inhabit the ruin, occupy and settle it with architectures that renew its value, they are commited with the past and the present, and they guarantee their future presence. In this sense, the wanted and searched condition of "presence", is not as supported by the recovery of what have existed as it is by the ability of the intervention by accepting the transformations which have happened throughout history, introducing in turn a new stratum that besides answering the current needs, strengthen its statement as architecture. And all of that, urban regeneration is searched through the recuperation of the city’s scale loss.