Nicholas de Monchaux

Nicholas de Monchaux

Rolland Rome Prize
January 6–July 7, 2014
Profession
Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture and Urban Design, University of California, Berkeley
Project title
Robustness, Resilience, Redundancy, and Rome
Project description

Rome is a seminal text in urban history; I believe it is essential to the future of architecture and the city as well. For this Fellowship, I propose to strategically document and extend Rome’s urban and architectural history of reuse, reappropriation, and spatial and physical redundancy, and deploy this knowledge to shape and challenge a set of design proposals for health of the modern city. This work will exploit the enormous archival, intellectual, and physical resources of Rome and the Academy toward our most urgent task as a profession: devising design methods to ensure a more robust, and resilient, urban future. The specific outcome of the proposed work will synthesize traditional archival research, architectural design, and the continuing development of custom design software. It will take the form of an exhibit and portfolio of Rome’s history of adaptation and reuse, together with architectural proposals for underutilized parcels inside Rome.