The Edge of Modernist ‘sventramento’ at Piazza Augusto Imperatore in Rome

Abstract

The term sventramento appears in the lexicon of Italian urban planning since the great post-unification actions aimed at the modernisation of the State’s main cities when large areas of the historic centre were involved in interventions that deeply affected the urban pattern to open new squares and avenues, restore insalubrious urban areas, isolate and expose the archaeological ruins of the imperial past. The creation of a new urban void involves the design of its edge, limes between the pre-existing building pattern and the freed space. The discontinuities of this margin are represented by the accesses: the passages between perceptual moments at different densities. This contribution proposes a method to perceptually investigate these accesses with typological, quantitative and qualitative analyses, as these are points where the impact of “urban evisceration” is most evident. The quantitative study is conducted through three-dimensional modelling and the analysis of intervisibility, implemented through visual programming language techniques. The qualitative study exploits the potential of the spherical drawing to selectively divide and highlight some visual stimuli at the accesses. Of the various episodes of large-scale demolitions that have been taking place since 1924 in the Roman pattern, we analysed the one relating to piazza Augusto Imperatore. This is the intervention designed by the architect Vittorio Morpurgo between 1934 and 1952, aimed at liberating the Mausoleum of Augustus.