Architecture that Moves

“This building is like a book. Its architecture is the binding, its text is in the glass and sculpture.”

Today has been my day of reflecting and writing about the last week of adventures that I have had in Rome, some of the experiences of these place were awesome (the Colosseum, the Vatican, Ostia Antica), some where not quite what I expected (The Sistine Chapel, Appia Antica's Early Christian Catacombs), and one was a completely moving experience, Fosse Ardeatine.

Rome really does speak to all who come here, and there are so many other sorts of inspiring

and moving kinds of architecture besides the 300 churches that populate Rome, you just have to look for them. Which, don't get me wrong, the

churches are great, but after a while I start to see so many amazing churches that the memories of each start to fuse together. But on Sunday when our group went to Appia Antica, we also visited Fosse Ardeatine which was a memorial that was built to commemorate the deaths of 335 Jewish and Christian Romans who were

assassinated in caves, that are connected to the early Christian Catacombs, by the SS on March 25, 1944.

The architecture and the message of Fosse Ardeatine was unlik

e anything I had experienced in Rome proper, catching my attention and stirring my thoughts.

In my opinion, in some ways designing a monument or memorial is really what the pinnacle of architecture is about, letting you create a very certain statement on the human condition and the choices that we as people have made. Architecture should be about making people participate in the built environment in ways that probes them to question their environment, whether it be politically or historically. I think that we should strive to create an architecture that lends itself to constantly allowing the participant to stir questions. Architecture is more than just 4 walls and ceiling and floor, it is meant to move people, to drive them to question and wonder, it can be inspiring, or it can be extremely condemning. We see the inspiration in the ruins at the Colosseum or the Forum, as every person who walks the same road that the Roman walked thousands of year a

go, is left to wonder what it was like to live and be of that time and of that mind.

Fosse Ardentine was completely thought provoking for myself and I assume for others who where in the space. Everything from the lighting, material choices, regularity in form, and the heavy ceiling made you think or do something, whether you were aware of it or not. We were constantly touching the memorials, figuring out how young these men were when they died. The lighting was low, creating a cave like environment, but also the coloring of the stone and the etchings made it hard to see, so we were basically interacting with every tomb in there that we touched, thinking about this man, looking at his photo, and constantly wondering and questioning how fate intervened, making him one of the 335 men to die at the hands of the SS.