The Pleasures of Parioli's via Paisiello

We were living just a few blocks away from via Giovanni Paisiello, where we [thought] we had identified the location of a fine piece of mid-century modernist architecture.  We set out to find it.  All we lacked was the precise address.

Our task seemed easy.  There's not much to via Paisiello, which runs northeast (the direction we walked) for just a few blocks between Villa Borghese and viale Liegi.  Moreover, the Parioli quartiere isn't exactly loaded with great buildings; so we figured if we saw one that was worthy--and of the appropriate time period--we would have found our prey.

And there it was, at #10.  Powerful angular corner balconies.  Captivating mosaics.  Everything in need of repair, but the elements were there.  A lovely example of a species we enjoy: mid-century modernism.

These are great balconies. Pour me a
glass of Arneis!

Today it's a bank

Very 1960

Except we had the wrong building.  As we later learned, the building we were looking for--clearly the most famous on the street, was the one in the photo below, a couple of blocks further along, at #39.  At first glance (and maybe second) it's an odd duck: the bottom half is a handsome but rather traditional palazzo in the classical language common in Rome in the early 20th century.  The top half--3 + stories--is mid-century horizontal glass and metal.  Between 1950 and 1952, some part of the original palazzo was removed and, under the supervision of prominent architect Mario Ridolfi, a modern addition added.  That kind of radical surgery doesn't happen often--we can't think of another example in Rome--and that's why the building is notable. It helps, too, that the surgery was successful.  So successful that on our first trip up via Paisiello we hadn't even noticed the structure.  Ridolfi did well.

The building's reputation also owes something to the fact that Ridolfi was in the first tier of 20th-century Italian architects.  Among his buildings are the rationalist Nomentano post office in Piazza Bologna (1932), one of the 4 commissioned for Rome by the Fascist regime; a playful and architecturally significant public housing project in Tiburtino (1950-51); and the headquarters for FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), begun in 1938 as the Ministry for Italy's African colonies.

We might have considered our first effort on via Paisiello a failure, were it not for some other discoveries, all within a few blocks.  We admired the enormous cantilevered corner balconies of this otherwise ordinary apartment house:

Then there was this treasure, at first sight just another classic palazzo, this one in red.  On closer inspection, it turned out the palazzo wasn't so classic.  Indeed, it's of Fascist-era origins--1935 to be exact.  It carries a Latin inscription, some heads that reminded us of the heads that decorate one of the buildings in Piazza Independenza and, high above, a couple of elegant statues to link the building (and the regime) to ancient Rome.

Next door, and not so well cared for, another 1930s building with nice curvelinear lines, no doubt originally an apartment building but now the Hotel Paisiello.  The round side/rear balconies are exceptional.

From another era, but equally fine, at the far (northwest) end of the street.

And that's via Paisiello--or rather, what we saw of it.

Bill

The Butterfly Roof: from Marconi to Palm Springs, California

This forlorn building, partly boarded up and for rent, is located just south of via Grimaldi, in the Marconi district.  It was once a theater.  We took the photo because we're interested in Rome's modern architectural forms, and the roof line--an element of what is known in the states as "googie" architecture--is an unusual one for the city.

We were reminded of the photo a few days ago, when we read in the New York Times of the death of architect Donald Wexler at the age of 89.  Wexler lived and worked most of his life in Palm Springs, California, a hotbed of mid-century modernism (now all the rage among the millenial generation).

He is best known for the Palm Springs International Airport, for a set of 7 prefabricated "steel" houses, and for El Rancho Vista Estates, 75 homes built in 1960.  One of Wexler's signature architectural features, found on many of the houses he designed, is the folded or "butterfly" roof--see below--very much like the one on the Marconi district theater.

Wexler didn't design the theater, or the butterfly roof at its front, but his story offers a window into mid-century modernism, and it helps to fix the date of the Rome building.  It was very likely constructed in the 1960s, probably early in the decade.

Bill

The Parking Garage beneath the Villa Borghese

It was a lovely afternoon on via Veneto, and so we naturally decided to explore--hope you're ready for this--an underground parking garage!  (Chorus of moans, sighs of despair from readers. Tearing of hair.)

In our defense, we think this is only the second parking garage we've featured.  The other is Riccardo Morandi's groovy (as in late 1950s) structure, linked to a large indoor market on via Magnagrecia.  Not everyone--not even some well known Rome architects--knows about that building. 

Adventure begins

The garage we explore in this post is located on (or under) viale del Galoppatoio, beneath the Villa Borghese.  It can be accessed off the fast-moving viale del Muro Torto.  Indeed, there's a YouTube video of a driver coming up the Muro Torto, turning onto the garage access ramp, going through the garage, and exiting--well, somewhere.  It's less than two minutes long:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJHuorfImZU. 


We took the pedestrian escalator entrance at the high end of via

Veneto.  Once below ground level, to get to the garage proper one walks through a long tunnel that is sometimes peopleless. 












At the end of the tunnel there's a depressing commercial area (not fully occupied, not enough

Too much concrete.  But then it's a parking garage.

"traffic").  Beyond that there's some brutalist concrete work (right) and--the first sign, really, of the architectural genius we're looking for--a circular staircase that leads upward to the park (below). 











It's a bit worn now, but still impressive.  Maybe the architect knew of Morandi's circular design (of

You could date the structure within 10 years just from
this stairway

course he did).  It's not Borromini's staircase in the Palazzo Barberini.  It's not Albini and Helg's department store gem in Piazza Fiume.  But it is suggestive. 

Watergate apartments, Washington, D.C.

It ought to be.  For the architect who designed the stairway, and the famous garage beneath, is one of Rome's most famous and most talented.  Readers of Rome the Second Time will know him as the author of the recently restored ex-GIL in Trastevere, but he is also revered for the Casa della Cooperative Astra (1947-51) on via Jenner, and for a building known as La Girasole (1949-50), on via Bruno Buozzi, at no. 64.  He had a hand, too, in the 1960 Olympic Village in the Flaminio district.  Most Americans will be familiar with his Washington, D.C. creation: the Watergate complex. 

Under construction.  It's better without cars. 

The garage is by Luigi Moretti.  It houses 1800 spaces for automobiles, 210 for scooters and motorcycles.  It was completed between 1965 and 1972, which accounts for the hybrid look of late modernism and early brutalism (the concrete noted earlier). Whatever its appeal, it was sufficient to lure a major international modern art exhibit--known as Contemporanea--which inhabited the structure in 1973, a moment when such an idea could not only be imagined, but brought to fruition.  The garage's architectural reputation would seem to rest (like the garage itself) on its graceful, space-age columns, and on its concave roof treatments, with a nod to the occasional provision for natural light.  

Contemporanea, 1973, an area featuring Kounellis

Now, isn't that more fun that having a cocktail at the Grand Hotel Palace?

Bill

p.s. A controversial plan, involving some actual digging, to add some 700 area parking places in a nearby lot under the Pincio, the small hill above Piazza del Popolo--said to be necessary to convert the trident area off the piazza to pedestrian-only traffic--now seems dead. 


 

Light from above enters the space.  Even some foliage.