Tiber Island New Ground

Academic Work - FALL 2015 - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Study abroad in Rome)

Site Location: Tiber Island, Rome, Italy

Individual Project

Critic: Zbigniew Oksiuta

Rome is the “eternal city” with a hodgepodge of monuments of different time periods. No matter it’s from Republic period, Imperial period, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Fascist or modern times, traces can be found in this city and none of them dominates. This kind of coexistence of “the old” and "the new” has been shaping the urban fabric of Rome for thousands of years. Thus, while the new cultural center should stand out from the historic context, it should also be in a “symbiotic” relationship with its surrounding monuments.

Inspired by the rocks in Tiber river, the new cultural center will have a morphology similar to river stream flowing over rocks (historic preserved monuments). This is not only a reminiscence of the Roman history of flooding, but also a tentative solution for reconciling the contemporary tension between modern urbanization and historic preservation. The design started with historic preservation evaluation followed by fluid dynamic simulation.