THE CONSTRUCTION AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE

Marco Petreschi – Paolo Marciani – Diana Petti
architects

Our project is a temporary structure in the sense that it will serve only for a very short time. But nevertheless the undertaking is complex since it has to incorporate a complex series of ritual gestures and spectacle events which are part of the two-day celebrations for this youth rally. An impressive number of people will be acting on the different platform levels, beginning with the Holy Father: the cardinals and bishops, the acolytes, the orchestra and choir, the young people who will give testimony, groups who will sing and dance, the artistes.

For this reason we have constructed a project keeping in mind that the architecture, by nature overflowing from the function box of the natural needs, spaces, equipped with systems and services, should be transformed into something which is the expression of man’s culture in his day. In our daily activity as architects an ancient profession, that of building a home to meet the needs of man, coincides with the art of listening to the interior breathing of human things and institutions, in order to give sensible form to the ensuing suggestions.
We drew fundamental inspiration for the project from a first field-visit to the Tor Vergata area where the platform was to stand.

The site of the rally has an area of about 500 hectares, built up in some zones. It is situated between the buildings of the Tor Vergata University complex, Rome’s ring-road the Grande Raccordo Anulare and the motorway Roma– Napoli.
Architecture as we said before is nourished by emotions as well as functions.
The first emotional impact for us was to see that immense uneven area of green no longer country-side but not yet city and to imagine far away in the distance, on the highest part of the land, the Pope as a little white blob against the background of the university campus buildings.

From up there the Holy Father was to speak with the young people, from there the Word of God was to be proclaimed, and up there the Eucharist would be celebrated.

What effect would that little white blob have on such a vast masse of eyes?. Our immediate thought was to build something to arrest those eyes.
Hence the idea of a great wall, which is really the basis of the project.

In dynamic balance with the two extremes of a great wall, on one side a tall cross set solidly in the wall; on the other a complex of platforms, connected by slopes and stairs, to host the different moments of the liturgy and spectacle, the chair of Peter and the assembly of bishops.
Above these three platforms a vast articulated covering, inspired by the tents of nomad peoples.
To synthesize, the constructive elements of our project are three:

The wall with the cross

 Places and paths The tent Conclusions