Pomezia Cultural Centre (2010)

Final Architectural Design Studio, supervisor Prof. Arch. M. Petreschi, tutor Arch. P. D'Alfonso

“Sapienza” University of Rome, “Valle Giulia” Architecture Faculty

Pomezia, city founded in 1939, in the province of Rome. The intervention is developed on an area characterized by the presence of a barn, realized in 1954 from Studio Passarelli, for the Italian Agriculture Group Federation. In 2003 the city administration published a competition for the realization of a new city cultural centre: a 550-seats lyric and prose theatre, an archeological museum where to expose Etruscan evidence, and an acting school had to be placed in the area, focusing the project on the reuse of the barn. The students of the Final Architectural Design Studio 2009/10 ideally participated to the competition, presenting their proposals.

This project finds its strenght in the relationship with the preexistence, that works as a shapes and alignments generator. The barn, where the theatre (along with its technological expedients) and the acting school are situated, is left almost completely intact with the exception of the northern façade, emptied to permit a better permeability between interior and exterior, and of two concrete volumes, containing the theatre fly tower and the foyer. The original materials are mantained. The profile of the barn is moreover doubled and traslated, to generate the archeological museum, in finished concrete too and enlighted by two internal courts; this part of the building has been thought to be partially hypogeal to permit a better view of the preexistence from the street and to create a panoramic walk on its roofing.