A Courtyard Block for Celio, Rome
Fall 2020, University of Notre Dame
This project is a proposed intervention for disused land in the Celio district of Rome. The concept was to transform an abandoned transit site into a walkable and lively extension of the adjacent neighborhood by adding a group of courtyard buildings shaped and positioned to define a network of outdoor public spaces. The new buildings are intended to accommodate ground floor retail and commercial uses with mixed-income housing on the upper level. Each student in the studio designed one building for the district, studying both Renaissance palazzi and early 20th-century courtyard housing blocks of Rome as precedents.
The plate above depicts the primary elevation of my architectural proposal for the district, as well as a bay detail and a vignette of the courtyard. On the map in the upper left corner, the dark mauve footprint represents the location of the building on the site. The sketch at the lower center was completed during a prior urban analysis of the approach to the Pantheon, and served as inspiration for the public spaces in the master plan for the Celio proposal, shown below at larger scale.
Prior to developing an individual building design within the given district, I joined a team of seven students to generate a master plan for the entire site. After we agreed upon a design, I produced the image above — drafting a final version by hand and rendering a scanned copy of the underlayment in Photoshop. I incorporated and adjusted the color of the trees from a scan of a watercolor image by classmate Alex Hooyman, while classmate Ben Shelton produced the title block and scale.
Ground Floor Layout
Shops at ground level enjoy dual frontage along external streets and the interior courtyard. While the courtyard is primarily intended for everyday use by residents of the upper levels, it is also available to the public. Through careful handling of topography, the courtyard successfully negotiates a grade change of 3.35 meters (about 11 feet) with ramps that would be ADA-compliant. All entrances to stairwells are fully accessible.
Typical Residential Floor
Each typical residential level contains four groupings of four units, each with a shared stairwell at its center — an efficient spatial arrangement found in the apartment buildings designed in the early 20th century by Italian architects such as Sabbatini and Pirani. Below is the first floor above the ground level, or piano nobile.
Each floor of the proposed mixed-use building would have sixteen units. Shown above is one quadrant of a floor, consisting of four apartments. Special considerations for these designs included the local legal requirement for windows in all kitchens and at least one bathroom per unit. Also important to consider was the Italian preference for smaller, self-contained kitchens.