Alice Brocato
In Piranesi’s Campo Marzio, the real is reconfigured in a utopian sense; ancient architecture proliferates in a montage of forms and citations; the city is identified as the invention of a possible “accomplished formal structure.” The project’s premises are grounded on a similar temporal revisionism, articulating around an imaginary urban condition.
The traces of the Foro Bonaparte in the urban planning of late 19th century Milan opens the possibility for an investigation that, starting from the plans of Cesare Beruto, redesigns the city on the uchronic hypothesis of the realisation of the urban form proposed by Giovanni Antolini in 1801. The building thus becomes the fourth element of a system that – along with the Forum – includes the Arena Civica and Piazza Sempione, imitating both its urban approach and its architectural typology.
It consists of a ring-shaped building, lacking a main façade, which behaves as a permeable perimeter, punctuated public passages aligned with the streets. These cross the courtyard, fragmented by the three volumes outside the perimeter and inscribed in it. The hybrid character of the Forum is found in the concatenation of educational and entertainment buildings on the ground floor, topped by two tiered inhabited levels that set back from the street and are served by cores that radially regulate the building, echoing the architectural seriality of the urban giants to which it looks.
_
