PART2: Points of Influence - Ara Pacis Museum

 

The museum for the Ara Pacis by Richard Meier serves to protect the monumental altar. It is a volumetric container that allows the Ara Pacis to remain the main exhibition of the space. It accomplishes this through the use of architecture’s role in the city using factors related to context, form/performance, and detail. Meier’s Ara Pacis museum lends way to the image of a modern city, which is “characterized by impure mixtures of old and new” (pg.13). The existing and intervention start to harmonize over time and create a coexisting fabric that encourages even further development. The way that we choose to formulate what is intangible or ‘virtual’ becomes the language (successful or not if it sticks out like a sore thumb) that communicates between the building and the city fabric.

Courtesy of Richard Meier & Partners Architects, © Roland Halbe ARTUR IMAGES

The form is generated by the context. The proportions of the plan of the rectangular form correlate with the surrounding buildings. The layering of the rectangles takes shape as the form hugs the corner of the curb. The length of the loggia traces the Tiber River and faces the existing Mausoleum of Augustus. The facades facing these two historically significant points remain mostly transparent to connect visually to each of the two North and South relationships.

            The form is generated by the performance of the space. The power of a linear organization in plan forces the act of viewing and progression in circulation. The inhabitant moves directly up into the center of the altar then down and out of it. The loggia raises the building from the public ground level perhaps hindering the public action above ground level. However, the northern low wall offers seating for the public street adjacent to it and people gather around the fountain at the street to the south.

Site plan by Richard Meier & Partners Architects, © Roland Halbe ARTUR IMAGES

            The details of the building focus on the use of natural light and avoiding shadows through the use of skylights and curtain walls. The loggia has constructed details that draw directly from the immediate context like the low wall that traces where the edge of the Tiber River used to be and how the balcony breaks into the loggia at a point that registers with the building directly across the street.  Meier uses a play in tectonics that creates a language, which is specific to only this building in comparison to its surroundings. It does not mimic the old but speaks of it with a new language drawing on the existing forms of rigorous symmetry and repetitive elements. This is an opportunity for the growth potential of Rome to become a more flexible city that allows for further integration of architecture that changes with time.

            I am interested in this building because of its insertion in such a historically preserved context. Meier displays clues of thinking about architectural issues that are meant to create a seamless transition between his creation and its context. I looked at the way that he handles the context, form/performance, and detail. The place shows that certain forces that exist in the context played a role in the creation of the building. The collision of distinction is interesting part of how the architecture is handled. Taking a stance on how to bridge the “tension across seams of difference” (pg.12) when inserting a project into any context requires a focus on the issues of context, form, performance, and detail among other factors. This becomes a way to make an intervention seem seamless.