In Rome at the moment and finished working on a masterplan project with a few classmates. This is a revisioning of Porta Portuense, a site just outside the old Roman city gates…packed with shanties, dumps, and abandoned scooter parts: the home of the unwanted.
oh, and the infamous flea market…
Analyzing the site and the surrounding neighbourhoods, we found that the existing road (via Portuense), along with the walls that surround it, cuts the access to the Tiber from the city. The longitudinal flow across the site prevents residents from the northwest from filtering through…but without program, the wastelands proves lacking of any desirable destination.
The vision, in short, is to draw from the dynamic and spontaneous nature of the flea market. the urban fabric into a porous network of paths: the urban fingers of the roads intersecting with the green roots of the river. In addition to breaking up some of the more solid built masses into finer grained residential blocks, the traffic on the road is reduced into a serviceable boulevard, transforming the disused corridor into a river-side park.
The major intervention along the river is the redevelopment of the river wall into a meshwork of hills. This varying array allows for the creation of a multitude of conditions: explicit and implied paths, gentle slopes for walking, paths cut through the earth, large plateaus for informal gathering or exhibitions, and more.
The multiplicity of paths and informal functions accommodates the ever-changing Tiber: the rising level of the river does not shut down the path system, but allows for new paths and experiences.
+ autoCAD
+ photoshop