HAPPY WALK
TIBURTINA HIGHWAY: HAPPY WALK
The city we know is terribly serious!
Modern city, with its concepts of functional dwelling, optimization of transportation and zoning, leaves no spaces where people can be themselves and get reacquainted with the space around them.
We considered an infrastructure of the city of Rome: the TIBURTINA HIGHWAY, that according to the programs of the administration could lose its function as a way for cars becoming a recovery plan.
Going through this space that we noticed, besides the incredible spaciousness of this place, was the scene: not only the old Rome and the monuments of all periods, but trains. Trains everywhere. This was the spark.
Children really like to watch trains, and from this location we can reduce the city to a model. What we propose is to change the perspective, the same philosophy that we found in the work of an important italian photographer: Olivo Barbieri.
Through aerial photography and perspective from above, Olivo Barbieri makes sorted and architectural, the chaos of life, removing from the scene – as in a map – the accidents of temporal reality. Barbieri exclude time from the scene, leaving only space. The visible effect of this radical elimination of one of the fundamental elements of reality is under the eyes of all: the reduction of true-to-model, plastic, reduction of scale that everyone, including children, receive watching pictures of Barbieri “look, looks like a model!” and that is compounded by the style of Olivo which shows only one or a few elements of the scene.
Look at the city like a child.
The space that we live in the Italian cities is full of rules, is too formal: the baroque squares obeys rigid conceptions of space where people feels actors in a scene, but not truly free.
So we imagined the highway’s space like a huge public space to be filled with attractive features for everybody, especially for childrens and their grandparents, imaging a large green space and “Huts” which may serve as public gardens, as kindergardens and as places for the trainspotting. A playng space, raised up space from below, where everything is serious and boring and we can only dream about.
The wheel house of the movie “Up!” becomes our inspiration! Change perspective and enjoy the public space as no one has ever done.
FUNNY IS UPSTAIRS – Compared with the traffic, noise and chaos of the city, colorful and vivid image of the gardens, huts and umbrellas, propels us into a new dimension, where public space is experienced by adults and children; crossing a barrier such as railways becomes a pleasure that only grandparents can share with grandsons.
ANTI BOULEVARD - In Via Prenestina and Via dello Scalo di San Lorenzo, where possible, we removed the street, placing large pots with trees on the pillars. Green is brought to a higher level, the level of public space! What we propose is the anti-boulevard.
HAPPY WALK – A beautiful walk with great views and plenty of rest stops, many colored umbrellas. The families are reclaiming public space and long walks together.
YOUR GARDEN IN THE SKY – It seems incredible, but to cultivate a garden 40 meters in height is not so different from doing so on the ground. The air is cleaner, you can hear children playing: they are happy to look at the trains passing below. At home we eat the tasteful vegetables we planted in our garden in the sky!
TRAINSPOTTING – From Rome to the smaller station of a small country, there is always a grandfather that bring his grandchildren to see the trains pass. Children have their own way of seeing things, removing the chaos and problems they are able to grasp the essential things to all situations, and what for an adult is a complicated and noisy tangle of rails for a child is simply the greatest toy train in the world!
