Victoria Tsui

The Piazza del Popolo is the site of the original entrance gate to the city, on the topmost edge of the Aurelian Wall. Over time, the geometry of the piazza shifted from being more trapezoidal in plan to a more oval shaped layout because the French wanted to develop the east-west axis. Along with the change of geometry in plan, there was also a drastic shift in section of the city, with the building of the embankment wall and the manipulation of the Piazza del Popolo to create a hierarchical topography starting from the Vatican City, leading up to the Villa Borghese. The axis shift created a new Roman armature in which the city became a series of vires that don’t align with each other, creating a sensitivity to the idea of endlessness. 

My project is reflective of the continuity of urban contexts in Rome and brings in a new urban texture through the repetition of an element. The repetition of the stepwell acts as a spatial critique of eternity, confronting the embankment wall as a boundary that both protects and isolated. As a concept that is meant to be endless through Rome and all through the Tiber River, it is a framework that resists resolution, allowing memory and imagination to coexist without resolution, and resisting dialogue. 

The projection of the existing streets inform the breaks in the embankment wall, and the existing underpass conditions on the site inform the space. While creating a homogeneous relationship on the outside of the endless structure, the inside is meant to be more labyrinthic and a more fluid space. With the infinity of the structure, I am to reflect the infinity of the Eternal City.

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