Spanish School of Archeology | Schiattarella Associati

Escuela Espanola de Historia y Arqueologia en Roma

The building is located in Rome’s historical center, at the corner between Via delle Tre Cannelle and Via di Santa Eufemia, covering an area of 1,600 m². The School carries out a very complex activity that involves both research on the field and scientific and cultural promotion. This is why the building’s use is multi-purpose: educational, administrative, residential, cultural. Our project aimed at integrating these different activities realizing not only functional but visible vertical and horizontal connections producing, inside the construction, real pass through cavities. The building is dug by breaches that cut the floors in order to let the light penetrate inside and reach the building’s core. At the same time walls dematerialize and light can spread and seep through. Space becomes the real manifesto of the project; lightness, flowing of emptiness, strictness and basics of shapes but spatial complexity too, are the guidelines concepts of logic planning: a striped and pleated surface seems to levitate agile in an area made of light and dimmer colored tones. Some bright splinters are freely arranged in the empty area/space.