Rome Studio Projects

Here are George's studio projects! If you wondered what George has been up to all semester, then the answer is designing, drafting and rendering these plates.

The first project, a two week project at the start of the semester, is an Italian garden located on the edge of the Celian Hill next to the Colosseum, Palatine Hill and the Circus Maximus. The garden itself contains many different types of garden elements composed in such a way to reference other Italian gardens and to take advantage of the garden's incredible location in the city.

The second project is of a Flemish Embassy and Cultural Center in Rome, next to San Andrea della Valle. The idea of the embassy is to showcase the Flemish artistic contributions to the Roman Renaissance and Baroque. The embassy follows a traditional Roman palazzo typology. On the second floor, "piano nobile", contains a suite of four rooms in which artwork of various Flemish artists are displayed. The courtyard contains sculpture by Flemish artists.

Top floor plan is of the top floor, the middle floor plan is of the second floor and the bottom floor plan is of the ground floor.

Front and back elevations.

East and west side elevations.

Section and detail of acanthus stucco work located in the Grand Salon's, which is on the second floor, corner ceiling cove.

The final and third studio project, all done in 12 days, is a proposal to fill out the existing architectural context around a papal tomb of Gregory XV in the Boncampagni Ludovisi Chapel in San'Ignazio. 

At the start of the project, we met the current Princess Ludovisi at her home in Villa Aurora where she gave us a tour of the villa and spoke of the family history. (Caravaggio's only fresco is in this Villa.) 

George solution to the project was to add a Baroque interior to compliment the Baroque papal tomb. Taking inspiration from the existing oval dome, he turned the chapel into an oval with two convex aedicules on the sides. There are four free standing columns in the chapel on which allegorical statues of the four cardinal virtues rest. In the lunettes of the lower dome, there are the lives of four saints that Gregory XV canonized (St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, St. Philip Neri, and St. Teresa of Avila). In the upper dome, there is a fresco of heaven with the saints in glory. In the top of the cupola, there is the ascent of the Holy Spirit. Thus the chapel is not only a funerary monument but a place for prayer. When one enters one sees the earthly realm in the marble, then one ascends slightly towards the virtues and those that exemplified those virtues. As one looks up, one sees heaven opening up and the Holy Spirit descending. 

Done in an analitque, which is a way of composing and thinking about many scales of architecture at the same time.  Both the details and the general floor plan are presented.

George's professor has nominated this project for accommodation and possible publication by the school!

When the students presented their final project to their professor, the dean of the school and the Prince and Princess Boncampagni Ludovisi, they also showed other work from this semester.