Exhibition design
Eisenman Architects, 2012.
On occasion of Common Ground, director Sir David Chipperfield’s Thirteenth Architecture Biennale in Venice. I worked with Eisenman Architects to present A Field of Diagrams, wherein the improbable compositional aesthetics that drive Piranesi’s etchings are transformed into a spatial and temporal palimpsest between Imperial Rome and the present day, generating a radical notion of vertical dimension. The project is part of The Piranesi Variations, which includes three other contemporary interpretations of Piranesi’s fantastical project for Rome.
Historical background
In 1762, after years of fieldwork measuring the remains of ancient Roman edifices, Giovanni Battista Piranesi published his Campo Marzio dell’antica Roma, a folio of etchings that have haunted the minds of architects and architectural scholars ever since. These etchings and further studies of ancient Rome completed by Piranesi construct a landmark shift—characteristic of the Enlightenment—from a traditional antiquarian perspective to a scientific, archaeological view of history.