“Alle parallele della memoria”. Spunti da Roma Interrotta, tra immagine di natura e artificialità del paesaggio

Abstract

The explosion of the urban phenomenon and the growing artificialization of the territory — features inherent to the Great Acceleration — are at once the scenario for a crisis-driven way of thinking and the operative field for landscape and architectural design from the second half of the last century. Faced with the geographical overflow of the city of Rome, in the context of the exhibition Roma In-terrotta Paolo Portoghesi and Christian Norberg-Schulz looked to the mythical landscapes of Etru-ria and Latium as a horizon within which to glimpse the archetypes of an original nature — by then made unrecognizable — and of a meaningful relationship between that nature and the product of human transformative activity.
The article reinterprets that experience by investigating the relevance of that formal imaginary as a measuring tool for the anthropogenic imprint on the form of the ground — thus becoming a device capable of framing city and landscape design in a way that questions the distinction between na-ture and artifice within the intermittent dimension of the contemporary metropolis.