New York Times, 25/09/2006 =

September 25, 2006
Architecture Review | Ara Pacis Museum
An Oracle of Modernism in Ancient Rome
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

ROME — The opening of the Ara Pacis Museum should have been cause for
celebration. The first major civic building completed in the historic
center of Rome in more than a half-century, it trumpets this city's
willingness to embrace contemporary architecture after decades of
smugly turning its back on the present.

That the building is a flop is therefore a major disappointment.
Designed by Richard Meier for a site at the edge of a Fascist-era
piazza overlooking the Tiber River, the museum boasts a muscular main
hall built to house the Ara Pacis, an altar erected as a symbol of
Roman peace — that is, military conquest — from around 9 B.C. The
building's glistening glass and travertine shell has all of Mr.
Meier's usual flourishes, from the expansive use of glass to
obsessive grids.

But in its relationship to the glories of the city around it, the
building is as clueless as its Fascist predecessors. The piazza,
designed in the 1930's, was a blunt propaganda tool intended to
invest the Fascist state with the grandeur of imperial Rome; Mr.
Meier's building is a contemporary expression of what can happen when
an architect fetishizes his own style out of a sense of self-
aggrandizement. Absurdly overscale, it seems indifferent to the naked
beauty of the dense and richly textured city around it.

That kind of insensitivity tends to reinforce the cliché that all
contemporary architecture is an expression of an architect's self-
importance. The building is bound to give ammunition to architectural
conservatives who clamor that there is no room for bold new
architecture in the eternal city.

But if you're going to fiddle with ancient Rome, there are few better
places to start than this site, the Piazza Augusto Imperatore.
Designed by Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo, it is a prime example of how
the Fascists used architecture to reshape and distort history.

The Ara Pacis was excavated from its original site and carted in
pieces a short distance to its present location in the 1930's.
Mussolini reinstalled the altar in a new glass-and-stone building by
Morpurgo next to the ancient tomb of the Emperor Augustus (63 B.C. to
A.D. 14), implying the dictator's supposed bond with ancient emperor-
conquerors. The symbolic link between a modern Fascist state and a
heroic classical past was fortified by the flanking buildings, with
their abstracted facades and shadowy arcades.

Like other Fascist-era planners working in the city's historic heart,
Morpurgo callously razed the decrepit old neighborhoods that once
surrounded the ancient mausoleum, as if to liberate the city's
repressed imperial history. But he ignored the essence of the city's
beauty, the wondrous way you suddenly press up against the facade of
an unfamiliar church, for example, or enter an airy piazza that
appears out of nowhere.

Although Mr. Meier speaks eloquently about the architectural past,
his buildings can be stubbornly oblivious to physical and cultural
context. In Barcelona, Spain, the enormous glass facade of his Museum
of Contemporary Art inexplicably exposes the interior to the blazing
sun. His Getty Center turns its back on the car culture of Los
Angeles in favor of the themed fantasy of an Italian hill town.

The Ara Pacis Museum rises between a roadway that runs along the
Tiber and the enormous weed-encrusted drum of the ancient mausoleum
of Augustus several yards below. Anchored by the main entrance at one
end and an auditorium at the other, the museum's main hall is
sheathed in glass on both sides so that motorists can catch glimpses
of the Ara Pacis and the mausoleum just beyond it as they speed along
the river. A pleasant marble stairway near the main entrance leads up
from the piazza to the river embankment.

The building's best features reside in the interior, along the
carefully calibrated approach to the tomblike altar. Just inside the
entry, for example, a long, low window extends along the base of the
wall to remind you briefly of the world outside. From here a few
shallow steps lead up to the altar, which is bathed in natural light.

Mr. Meier has also responded deftly to the Roman altar, supplying a
structure that stands up to the sculpture's weight and stark power.
The main hall is supported by four heavy white columns that rise to
meet a grid of deep beams. The contrast between the rough finish of
Mr. Meier's travertine and the ornate stonework works just fine.

There are other nice details. At the back of the hall a stair drops
down behind a towering travertine wall to the theater lobby, which
acts as a hinge separating the room housing the celebrated altar from
the bustle. Above the theater an outdoor terrace juts out slightly to
afford a view up toward the Piazza del Popolo.

Yet in Rome context is inescapable, and Mr. Meier's building seems
intent on shunning the city's seductive charms. Like most new
museums, the Ara Pacis is stuffed with unnecessary add-ons: an overly
formal lobby, a bookstore and a 150-seat theater that seems a
wrongheaded fillip in a museum with a single work of art.

The museum's bloated size was not entirely Mr. Meier's fault; the
government client had something to do with it. But he compounds the
problem by playing to the piazza's monumentality rather than
countering it with the quietness that its pomposity demands.

There is nothing lighthearted or gentle here. The formal symmetry of
the two white blocks framing his building at either end, for example,
gives the structure a self-important solemnity. The thick slab of a
roof only adds to the composition's oppressive weight.

Still worse is Mr. Meier's treatment of two churches, San Rocco and
San Girolamo dei Croati, at one end of the piazza. To root his
building in the city's ancient fabric, he created a long travertine
wall that extends from the museum's main entrance to the roadway
beside the river. Viewed from the road, the wall chops the churches
off at half height, so that you don't feel the full effect of their
coming into view as unexpected treasures. And Mr. Meier's project
overwhelms the piazza below, pressing in on it disrespectfully so
that the church facades almost seem to recoil in embarrassment.

In the end his building may be as telling about the sins of our era
as Morpurgo's design was of his. While Mussolini's architects can be
faulted for trying to reshape the city's history for their own
propaganda aims — and to satisfy the egomaniacal drive of a despot —
the museum reminds us that vanity is not unique to generals or
politicians.

It may be another half-century before Romans go down this road again.

NYT original version =

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/arts/design/25paci.html?ref=arts


NYT print version =

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/arts/design/25paci.html?
_r=1&ref=arts&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

Fonti: MBAC rassegna Stampa:

http://rassegnastampa.beniculturali.it/Rassegnanew/


26/09/06 Stampa L'Ara Pacis?Celebra solo la vanità di Meier.
Mastrolilli Paolo 30

26/09/06 Messaggero Cronaca di Roma E il New York Times stronca
l'Ara Pacis di Meier C.Mar. 37

26/09/06 Giornale Roma "Il New York Times" stronca l'Ara
Pacis: "Irrispettosa" Cuomo Andrea 41

26/09/06 Riformista L'architettura fascista non è l'architettura
sotto il fascismo Zevi Adachiara 8

26/09/06 Libero Roma Anche agli americani non piace L'Ara Pacis

25/09/06 New York Times An oracle of modernism in ancient Rome
Ouroussoff Nicolai 1

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Martin G Conde
Washington DC, USA
mgconde@...