Assignment -01

Learning from Classical Urban Design Practices

Roman Forums
Student ID: 1601026

Description Visuals Lessons learnt

 Forum was the heart of Rome, multifunctional space,
Enclosed forum created using individual

elections, business and trade, social gathering, etc.

buildings with no formal relationship

Because the level area was small, only about five or six acres, buildings were
 Buildings are all uniquely created, each new one built to be
crowded close together. They were conceived as individual objects with no formal
better than the previous one
relationship between each other except for their location along a common narrow
 They all fall into one architectural group, enclosed
between each other

space, about a thousand feet long on an east-west axis. Each of the Forum’s
buildings, big or small, was in effect a monument to its sponsor, commemorating
him or some event associated with him. As an architectural group it had the
character of a permanent carnival. So exhibitionist were all these buildings that the
Romans resorted to a novel method to give prominence to the Republican Forum’s
most important building, the Senate’s assembly house, or “Curia”.
The buildings of the Republican Forum represent the development of steadily
increasing political power. Successive buildings were ever larger than their
predecessors. Gradually, Roman architects realized that the solution to designing
grand arrays of buildings lay not in the superlatives of massing or detailing, but in
grouping the buildings to form urban spaces. They recognized the utility of the
concept of enclosed space, architectural and urban, and they perfected its use.
architecture, creating spaces with a permanent
carnival/festive mood
 Best building, Basilica of Julia, has a portico at the front to
transition from inside to the forum, where meetings and
gatherings occurred
 Grand array of buildings surrounding the forum, there is no
order or sequence or controlling power,
 They created a stage and obelisk, masts for flags, there was
a temple as well on the right inside the forum
 There was no building created specifically for public
gathering, instead an outdoor forum was created and
unified the buildings in that space - an enclosed space,
open to sky but surrounded by buildings in an urban area

Like the Republican Forum, it was built along an axis determined by the space left
between hills in the central city. The design concept of the Imperial Forum was as
Enclosed forum created using a formal expression,

different from that of the Republican Forum as Athens' Acropolis is from its agora.
Here, again, architectural and urban masses were made subordinate to spaces.  In mountainous area so, the axis was based on availability
having unity in design and clarity of form

The Imperial Forum was composed of square, rectilinear, and semicircular plazas,
each formed by a colonnade and acting as a setting for a key focal building: a
temple or basilica at the end of the space. Such a configuration had many
advantages. In particular, it created distinct places within a still larger place.
Further, individual plazas could readily be connected by a colonnade, which acted as
both transition and link.
Perhaps the Romans were fortunate in having two completely different forums so
close together. What complements they must have been to each other: the old one
full of odd corners and places, cool and informal; the new one, spacious and open,
brilliant with sunlight and order! The Imperial Forum was a work of great clarity, of
immense regular spaces framed by colossal buildings. In contrast, the Republican
Forum was a jumble of buildings, arranged incidentally along an irregular spine of
space. The modern visitor can no longer discern the concept of the Imperial Forum,
for its enclosed spaces disappeared when its buildings vanished. In contrast, the
Republican Forum, now an array of stones, still suggests its original character: that
of architectural masses.
The Imperial Forum was nearly a textbook of all types. The ultimate refinement of
their space concepts can be seen in the large baths of Rome, which consisted of
immense building masses in immense architectural spaces.
of free space, availability of open space
 It was a planned approach, unlike Republican forum, it was
different like how agora - open area enclosed by buildings –
is different from acropolis - spontaneously buildings built
 Forum had rectangular and semicircular plazas, behind it
were colonnaded structures, then the activity space
 A lot of dominating forms, rectangle and semicircles, other
forms are included in a way as to compose these two major
forms in harmony
 Forum worked as transition space, for circulation, gathering
space, it was connected to other buildings so unlike the
Republican forum, it was not as easily accessible
 There was clarity of form, it was a formal expression, huge
scale compared to Republican forum due to rectangular
shape
 Used as a textbook standard for forum design