Calatrava's swimming pool: viewed from Rome's mountains

This post is about a swimming pool.  It's in the photo above, but you were probably looking at the Alban hills, or the moon, or the city at dusk.

Rome is circled by mountains on 3 sides: to the southwest, the Colli Albani--the Alban Hills--beckon with a set of charming small towns, including Frascati and Rocca di Papa, sitting below the highest mountain in the chain, Monte Cavo.  To the north and east, Tivoli provides  access to the higher mountains in the Monti Lucretili, a group that includes Monte Sterparo and, beyond it to the west, the highest of Rome's nearby mountains, Monte Gennaro. Then, much closer to the city--indeed, right in it--there's a low chain of mountains (hills, really) that includes Monte Mario (about 400 feet vertical from the river), with its close-up views of the Vatican and one of Rome's great bars, for its view: Lo Zodiaco.  And to the south of Monte Mario, and in the same chain, the Gianicolo.

We've been all over these mountains--walked every trail and been to every peak in the Colli Albani, done most of the major mountains in the Lucretili range, and walked the length of the Monte Mario complex more than once. Each hike has its pleasures (and, we should add, its irritations).

One of the minor pleasures is catching a glimpse, from any of the summits and many of the trails, of one of the outstanding architectural features of Rome's periphery: a swimming pool.

But not just any swimming pool.  To be seen from a distance, of course, the pool has to be a big one, and this one is.  Up close it's a soaring, curving, triangular hulk of a building, set in the far suburbs to Rome's east, near Tor Vergata, the newest of Rome's universities.  It was designed by starchitect Santiago Calatrava for the 2009 World Swimming Championships, and construction began in 2007.  But before it could be completed, Rome's right-wing mayor, Gianni Alemanno, cancelled the project. Here's what it looked like a few years ago:

And here's how it looks as we journey around Rome's horn of hills and mountains, beginning with the Alban Hills and moving counterclockwise.  In the photo below, Monte Cavo is to the left--with antennas--and the pool can be seen on the right, just above a dark set of lower hills.  The photo was taken from a mountain to the north and east of Monte Cavo.

Frascati is only a few miles from Monte Cavo, and set lower in the Colli Albani.  Here's the pool from Frascati.  Surprisingly close:

Tivoli is on the edge of another range, the Monte Lucretili, further north.  Here's what the pool looks like from the hills above Tivoli (about 600 vertical feet from the town).  Charming Tivoli is in the foreground, the white triangle of the pool about 1/4 from the right edge and near the horizon.

Below, the cross on Monte Sterpara--about a two hour hike from Tivoli, which is out of the photo to the left.  The pool, near the horizon, is to the left.

Monte Gennaro is the tallest mountain in the Lucretili range, with a hike up of from 2,000 to 3500 feet, depending on where you start.  Because Gennaro is high and further away, the pool gets smaller.  Below, we've cropped and modified the photo to make the pool more visible (if barely, at far upper left).  Don't complain.  In the foreground is the concrete platform atop the mountain.

Now, as we move back into the city to its west, the pool gets closer and, thankfully, more visible--though not much.  Below, photographed from the path up Mont Mario (near the Foro Italico), the pool is at left, against a backdrop of the Colli Albani:

 . 

We've raved before about the views from the top of Monte Mario, at the Lo Zodiaco bar.  Here's proof.  That's Rome, the Colli Albani, and the Calatrava pool, at dusk:

You don't have to climb even Monte Mario to see the pool.  The photo below is from the terrace of the American Academy in Rome, during its yearly open house showcasing the work of its fellows.  Put that June event on your calendar--if only to see the Calatrava pool.

Bill

The Ponte della Musica: Update, 2015

Ponte della Musica, much busier than usual on a soccer night.  The Stadio Olimpico is close by.  Monte Mario in the background.  View from our apartment.  Skateboarding space below left.  

The Ponte della Musica (2011) sits astride the Tevere at the big bulge of the Flaminio quartiere, with Monte Mario (straight ahead), Olympic Stadium (up river) and Prati (down river).  We wrote about the bridge two years ago, ambivalently, praising the elegance of its white, skeletal, curving plasticity while questioning its originality, noting its resemblance to two much older bridges, the Bac da Roda bridge in Barcelona (1987) and the Valencia bridge (1995), both by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.  Although we found the bridge more useful than did some critics, we subtitled that first piece "the bridge to nowhere."

Today we offer a different "angle" on the bridge, both figuratively and literally.  In June of this year we lived on the 6th floor of one of four 1930s-era apartment houses on Piazza Gentile da Fabriano, with an enormous terrace that overlooked the Ponte.  No one in Rome lives closer to the bridge, or has a better view.

The city, and the Alban Hills beyond, at dusk from Lo Zodiaco on Monte Mario.  The white triangle, center right in the distance, is Calatrava's unfinished swimming pool. 

French military cemetery.

From that position--unusual and privileged, we understand--we thoroughly enjoyed the access the bridge offered.  We hiked up Monte Mario (400 feet vertical) at least four times, enjoying the views of St. Peter's, the stunning views from the bar Lo Zodiaco, then dipping into the pleasures of new neighborhoods (Balduina and Trionfale) while discovering new sites (the amazing French military cemetery, Piazza Walter Rossi) and new paths on the mountain. All because of the Ponte.

We had cacio e pepe at Cacio e Pepe.

We also made several forays into Prati, whose northern end begins just downriver across the bridge. Piazza Mazzini, with its lovely fountain, came into our orbit, as did the jazz club Alexanderplatz and a guided tour of "liberty" architecture--all within walking distance of "our" bridge, and we enjoyed a well-known area restaurant, Cacio e Pepe (Dianne reviewed it not too positively for Tripadvisor), and two Lungotevere bars, one just across the Ponte, the other a long block south.  At the latter, and out for just a drink, we found live music and a free spread of food.

One of many brooding buildings in Prati.

That said, Prati--probed from the north, anyway--is not the most interesting or welcoming area.
Enormous, gloomy apartment houses--most built without provision for the commercial establishments that breathe life into a neighborhood--abound on Prati's north end, and its center is laced with block-long, deadening military establishments.  The southern end of Prati is lively and inviting, but it's also full of tourists--and it's a long walk (about 2 miles) from the Ponte della Musica.

Gymnast doing backflips for the camera.  

From our 6th-floor perch we also learned that the bridge is important for the activities it fosters, which take place on the bridge and under it.  Because the bridge is (for now) closed to motorized vehicles, and lies outside the regular tourist areas, it's open to a wider range of activities than the city's other pedestrian-only bridges.  It's used for photo shoots--some of them, at least, with a professional air--featuring groups of men with cameras taking pictures of dressed-up young women. One day we witnessed a small crew filming a gymnast doing backflips.

Exercise class. 

The wooden side walkways attract individuals and couples, reading, talking, contemplating, relaxing as they look out over the Tevere.  The wood walkways are also frequently used for yoga-like exercising, both by individuals and large, leader-led and organized groups. Joggers are frequent.

Dude dancing on the bridge.

The Ponte is also a performance space.  On one occasion, three young women posed for a male companion while standing on the end-of-bridge stanchions.  On another, we observed an aging
hipster, fresh from a physical confrontation with a nearby bar owner over an unpaid bill, break out into a strutting Michael Jackson-like moon dance.

Skateboarders--and graffiti

Below the main deck, skateboarders practice their skills on the large, flat concrete surface at the Ponte's Flaminio end, leaping on and off sleek granite benches that were likely not intended for that purpose.

Glass, broken cables, and a homeless man trying to sleep.

We enjoyed watching the skateboarders, but not everyone thinks they're a positive addition. In a letter published in La Repubblica, one citizen linked the skateboarders to the graffiti that mars the bridge, especially down below. Whether there's a connection or not we can't say, but there's no doubt that graffiti--and more generally, the destructive behavior of young people--is a problem below the deck, where ugly tagging mars the walls and broken beer bottles litter the stairways.  A homeless man was sleeping under the bridge.  Some of the wire cables that form the sides of the stairways were broken.  Graffiti has begun to appear on the vertical bridge supports on the upper level, though someone--most likely the city--painted over it during our June stay (in a color that didn't quite match).

Scooter on the Ponte della Musica, a pedestrian bridge.

The serenity of the bridge's main deck was interrupted on two occasions that we observed, when motorscooters violated the law and
used the bridge to cross the Tevere.  On one occasion, a young man of about 14, dressed in what might be described as the uniform of a junior police officer--or some kind of boy scout--upbraided the offending moto rider--who, apparently nonplussed, proceeded across the bridge.


And so it goes, at the Ponte della Musica.

Bill

Evening romance on the Ponte della Musica.  

Calatrava's Guardrail: The Architectural Trail

It’s only a guardrail.  It runs up a seldom-used stairway from the first to the second floor of the new market in Testaccio.  Curving and white, it drew our attention, and not only because it seemed so different from the brown, box-like building.  We were looking at Santiago Calatrava, the great Spanish architect.  No, he hadn’t designed this railing, or had a hand in the marketplace, for that matter. 

Calatrava's unfinished natatorium. 

But his imprint was there, nonetheless—and elsewhere in Rome, more obviously--even though his only Rome building, a natatorium for the University of Rome at Tor Vergata, sits unfinished in the weeds to the east of the city center.    

Calatrava's Bilbao bridge, 1997

Born in 1951, Calatrava was trained as both an architect and engineer, and it was as an engineering student that he was attracted to the work of the Swiss bridge engineer, Robert Maillart (1872-1940) and came to study under a disciple of Maillart’s, the famed bridge builder Christian Menn.  Through Menn and Maillart, Calatrava came to appreciate and explore the structural properties of materials, including steel, aluminum, concrete, glass and—later—carbon fiber.  In 1981, he completed a Ph.D. thesis whose title, “Concerning the Foldability of Spaceframes,” announced his growing interest in the possibilities of creating unique forms in space.

Calatrava's Bac de Roda bridge, Barcelona, 1987

Calatrava is self-consciously intellectual, and over the years, in speeches and interviews, he has articulated a broad range of cultural interests and influences: emotion (as opposed to reason—the paintings of Rothko are an example); rhythm and music; the human body and its movements and gestures (“the idea of breathing,” he said in a 2000 interview, “is astonishing….the idea that our fingers can move, the branches of trees or the waves of the water can move when the wind comes, are all astonishing ideas”); sculpture (he considers himself an architectural sculptor, and he admires the work of Rodan and Brancusi; painting (Cezanne, and especially Picasso); writers (the Russian Joseph Brodsky), and other architects (Frank Lloyd Wright [intuition producing the sublime, the poetic], Gaudi, Eero Saarinen). 

Calatrava's Valencia bridge, 1995

Calatrava is best known as designer of bridges, mostly skeletal and white structures with a curving plasticity.  Among his major works are the Bac de Roda bridge in Barcelona (1987), the Alamillo bridge in Seville (1992), the Valencia bridge for his home town (1995), and the Campo Volantin bridge in Bilbao (1997). 

These are ground-breaking structures, and it would seem absurd—even impossible—to connect them with the Testaccio market balustrade.  Impossible, that is, if there weren’t some way to demonstrate that Calatrava’s design aesthetics were penetrating and shaping the Rome architectural scene. 

Ponte della Musica (not Calatrava)

But there is.  In just a few years, two major bridges have been completed in Rome, and both demonstrate forcefully the influence of the Catalan architect.  One is Ponte Della Musica, which spans the Tevere north of Piazza del Popolo, in the quartiere of Flaminio.  

Ponte Ostiense (not Calatrava)

The other is Ponte Ostiense, which carries traffic over a rail and metro corridor just south of the Pyramid, on the city’s south side. 

Neither was designed by Santiago Calatrava, but both bear his mark. 

And so, too, does that guardrail. 

Bill

 We recommend the haiart interview with Calatrava at http://haiart.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/an-interview-with-santiago-calatrava/

Riccardo Morandi's Metronio Market

Over the past century, Rome has produced two generations of great architects.  One, serving Mussolini’s Fascist regime, or simply practicing in that era, applied the techniques and vision of rationalism or, somewhat later, monumentalism, to the public and private buildings of the period.  Among the rationalists one would have to include Luigi Moretti, author of the 1933 Casa del gioventú, in Trastevere, and Adalberto Libera and Mario De Renzi,collaborators on the Aventino post office (1933) on via Marmorata.  The monumentalists had their heyday at EUR, the massive development south of the city, where the chief architect was Marcello Piacentini. 

The second generation of great architects is the current one, composed of “starchitects” from Italy and elsewhere, who build one big project and then go on to do the same in some other city.  They include Richard Meier, out of the rationalist tradition, and his controversial housing for the Ara Pacis; Renzo Piano, who combined fantasy and functionalism in his Parco della Musica; Zaha Hadid, something of a monumental rationalist in herMAXXI art museum in the quartiere of Flaminio; and Massimiliano Fuksas and Santiago Calatrava, though neither has finished his Rome masterwork, and Calatrava’s swimming pool languishes in the weeds of Tor Vergata. (For more links to RST posts on these architects, see links at the end of this post.)

In between these generations there isn’t much, at least not much that stands out.  Although many buildings were constructed in Rome in the postwar “boom,” most of them were apartment buildings on the city’s outskirts, many of them handsome and some outstanding in a simple, functional way, but too much a part of the suburban fabric to stand out, or for their architects to be recognized for outstanding achievement. (And, Dianne chimes in, some of them not handsome or outstanding.)

There are exceptions, and we were reminded of one of them, a curious-looking market with an attached parking garage, when we read of plans—controversial plans, in turns out—to tear the complex down.  The structure is on via Magna Grecia on the northeast edge of the San Giovanni neighborhood, due passi from San Giovanni in Laterano, which is on the other side of the wall.  We stopped to have a look. 

The building is roughly triangular in shape, with the two longest sides adorned by protruding, fan-like windows. 

The stunning part, though, is the parking garage, or rather the access to it, up a prominent circular ramp—not so different, really, from what Frank Lloyd Wright accomplished on the interior of his Guggenheim gallery in New York City.  The Guggenheim opened in 1959, the Rome market in 1957. 

Inside, light from the window baffles suffuses the interior but is insufficient to overcome the forlorn atmosphere of the place.  A good portion at one end is unoccupied, and the vendors that do exist—selling meats, fish, vegetables, and housewares—have few customers. 

Faced with the possibility of demolition, the 25 remaining vendors have organized with a group called the “Urban experience” (the name is in English) to propose that the Metronio market, as it’s called, be adapted to some new uses, including shops that feature organic products and working artisans.   Among those trying to save the market, there is a sense that the building, and particularly the parking ramp, is of architectural significance.  There is disagreement, however, on whether saving it would require significant and expensive structural work to bring the edifice up to safety and hygienic standards, or only “conservative” restoration.

The man behind the Metronio market was Riccardo Morandi (1902-1989), a civil engineer (rather than architect) with a deep scholarly and practical knowledge of reinforced concrete (cement armato), an inexpensive building material with important structural qualities widely used in the post-1945 Italian reconstruction.  Morandi’s best known work is the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge (above), an 8 km structure with 70 cable-stayed spans crossing Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. He also participated in the postwar reconstruction of Florence, where he built a bridge over the Arno in the mid-1950s. 

Morandi's Cinema Maestoso, dear to our
 hearts becauser we saw the Whitney Houston/
Kevin Costner film "Guardia del Corpo" ("The
Bodyguard") in Italian, with our 2 sons, here
in 1993.  Who needed to understand the plot?
Houston's singing was the heart of the film.

Aside from the Metronio market, Morandi’s Rome projects include a Tevere bridge (known as “Il Grillo”)[1949/50]; a small palazzo on via Martelli (1950); the Cinema Maestoso (and the building above it) on via Appia Nuova (1954-57; a viaduct over a bend in the Tevere in Magliana ((1963-1967); a portion of the Fiumicino airport (perhaps the Alitalia terminal); and the Hotel Ergife (with B.M. Cesarano), on the via Aurelia (1975-1978).   Morandi also taught bridge design at the University of Florence and the University of Rome. 

Bill

Additional links to RST's posts on the architects mentioned in this post:

On Rome's new "bridge to nowhere":

http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2011/09/ponte-della-musica-romes-new-bridge-to.html

On Hadid winning the Sterling Prize:

http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2010/10/news-flash-hadid-wins-sterling-prize.html

On EUR buildings:

http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2009/11/rst-top-40-35-gino-severini-mural-at.html

On Foro Italico, nee' Foro Mussolini:

http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2011/05/rst-top-40-5-foro-mussoliniforo-italico.html

On more of De Renzi's work: in the Trionfale quarter, and public housing in the Mussolini era.

Generally on 21st century architecture in Rome: 

http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2010/07/planning-romes-future-modern-art-or.html

Piano's work is mentioned in the "Starchitects" post, as well as the one on the "bridge to nowhere."

For Meier's work, see also the post on the tunnel under the Ara Pacis and his magnificent Tor Tre Teste church in the suburbs of Rome.

Santiago Calatrava's Unfinished Swimming Pool at Tor Vergata

Walking to the pool

Late in our last visit to Rome, we ventured east of the city on public transportation to have a look at Rome's newest university, Tor Vergata, and to finally see a building we had heard much about: Santiago Calatrava's Palanuoto (swimming pool), located, we knew, somewhere near the university.   Our tour of the university was satisfying (more on that in an earlier post), but the pool evaded our grasp. 

Dianne in the olive trees

A long, hot walk over a barren plain (right above), and through an abandoned tract of olive trees (being harvested by squatters), brought us no closer than a half mile, we estimated.  That's Dianne in the grove, with our goal in the distance. 

We surrendered and returned two days later, this time on the scooter.  Even that proved problematic, as we carved turn after turn on new roads leading nowhere, mostly frequented by bicyclists in tandem, enjoying the emptiness. 

Abandoned road

We parked on a traffic circle, climbed over a railing and through an opening in a perimeter fence and up a road abandoned to geckos and weeds.

Calatrava's swimming pool, through the weeds

Moving along a second fence, we found no opening and gave up on our plan of getting within touching distance of the structure.  We took several photos; they all resemble the one on the left, shot from a low angle to emphasize the tumbleweed look.    

Calatrava's idea of how the Sports City would look

We assumed then that the pool was under construction.  No no.  Here's the story:  What we charmingly referred to as Calatrava's "pool" was, in fact, one of two fan-shaped pavilions that together were to comprise a "Sports City," intended for general sports use but especially designed for the 2009 World Swimming Championships in Rome.  Calatrava's conception, taken from his web site, is at right.

The tower, designed to house the Rector of the new
university.  Appropriately grandiose. 
Looks like a new EUR. 

The Sports City was to be located at one end of a massive promenade, modeled after the ancient Circus Maximus, with the university's Rectorate (meaning the building housing the rector, the university's president) at the other end.  The new university's buildings were to be distributed along this promenade. 

Ground was broken for the Tor Vergata campus (named after the alternating red and grey bricks of a "striped tower" sold in 1361 as part of the Annibaldi estate) in March, 2007.  But rising costs for Sports City led the right-wing Mayor, Gianni Alemanno, to halt the pool project.  The 2009 swimming competition was moved to the Foro Italico complex (on the Tevere, across from the Flaminio district) and to other hastily constructed pools, some of them carved out of tennis courts. 

Calatrava's Sports City was also linked to Rome's bid for the 2020 summer Olympic games.  Most of the other venues already existed.  But the world financial crisis intervened, and in late 2011 or 2012 the new premier, economic technician Mario Monti, ended Rome's Olympic bid by refusing it state support, despite an offer of 380 million Euros (of about 500 million needed) from a private Swiss group for Sports City, in exchange for 25 years of ownership of the structure. 

In July 2011, a report in La Repubblica remarked on the surrounding "moonscape" and characterized the site as one "dove non si vede l'ombra di un operaio" (where one doesn't see even the shadow of a worker).  By mid-February of the following year, the same newspaper referred to what there was of Calatrava's Sports City as "a cathedral in the desert," an "emblem of defeat," a "vero e proprio capolavoro senza futuro" (a veritable masterpiece without a future). 

When the Olympic bid was abandoned, Mayor Alemanno, who had earlier blocked the Calatrava project, was now upset.  He argued that the games would have helped expand the region's tourist potential by developing areas around Ostia, on the sea.  La Repubblica's Robert Mania, perhaps thinking of Mussolini's ambitious plans to extend the city to the Mediterranean--and beyond--wrote, "Ma questa idea di Roma che si estende verso il mare non avevamo gia sentita?"  (This idea of Rome extending itself toward the sea--haven't we already heard of this?).  Another overreach, another failed Italian--and perhaps imperial--dream.
Bill