September 2007 Archives

Not sure how I missed this book until now:

"The Ara Pacis of Augustus, the Augustan Alter of Peace, was restored in 1938 to celebrate the bi-millennial birthday of Augustus and is now being refurbished by the American architect, Richard Meier. It is the most-revered ancient Roman monument. However, this book shows that it is not the altar that everyone thinks it is, but rather a commemorative altar erected under the reign of Tiberius."

Is this true? I don't see any reviews on Amazon for this book - does anyone know anything about it?

Here is a really good video for the Ara Pacis Museum:

Here is some video of the Valentino show at the Ara Pacis museum (warning: if you are in a cubicle at work - it's accompanied by loud music). We have not made it down to Rome yet to see the exhibit in person, but we are hoping to before the show is over!

Another video - really a slide show - this one accompanied by some really corny music!

A new article in The New York Sun about the Ara Pacis Museum and Richard Meier from James Gardner, with a pointed criticism that I can relate to - the details:

"In architecture, details matter. The principle was brought home for me during a visit to the recently completed Ara Pacis Museum on the banks of the Tiber River in Rome. Designed by the New York-based Richard Meier, the building itself exhibits many of the powerful spatial effects and much of that quadratic elegance that are the signature of the architect. The fountain in the plaza out front, however, is a complete disaster. The problem is not so much with the design as with the materials, the engineering, and the maintenance of the waterworks. In homage to the architectural traditions of the Eternal City, much of the plaza is clad in travertine, a porous, igneous stone, susceptible to infestation.

Only a year old, the entire wall of the foundation area is already covered in reddish-brown algae. Because this is just about the first thing you see as you enter the museum's grounds, it casts a pall of ineffaceable abjection over the entire project. As you step closer to the fountain itself, its shallow pool marked by a sequence of liquid jets, you notice refuse and plastic bottles bobbing about in the fountain's gutters or rutted in a pool of viscous fluid."