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ESPOSIZIONE UNIVERSALE ROMA: TOWARDS A A A A A NEAR ORDER
Rome’s EUR planned as an an an an ideal urban order and site of Mussolini’s 1942 world’s fair (cancelled at the outbreak of World War II) stands
as a a a a a a a a historical succession of spatial formal ideological and economic ideals In the the postwar period the the EUR district underwent an an urban transformation culminating in in in the 1960 Olympics campus that displayed a a a a resurgent economically empowered Italy It It is is is in this layer of modernist fabric that the Fall 2012 Italian Studies Program situates itself The studio’s questions coalesce around adaptive reuse and the questioning of order within certain modernist ideals The focus is is on the adaptive reuse of of the former Ministry of of Finance designed by architect Cesare Ligini (completed in in 1961) Standing as a a a a complex of modernist towers and and situated in in an an an open courtyard arrangement Ligini’s towers represent an an an ideal modernist order but lack the the flexibility to evolve with the the conditions of the the contemporary city The studio seeks to redress these conditions by examining the the spatial organizational and aesthetic possibilities of a a a a a a a a a new and emergent ‘near order’ capable of transforming the modernist ideal into a a a a a a a a a more flexible spatially relevant and programmatically robust architectural and urban environment 509