EUR Congress Palace, Rome

Description

Designed by Massimo and Gabriella Carmassi, with M. Bonistalli, R. Guidi, S. Petruccioli, G.L. Spadolini and P. Spadolini as team leader, EUR Congress Palace, Rome was developed in 1999 as one of the seven invited proposals admitted to the second phase of the competition for the new congress centre on the last unbuilt plot of the EUR district, between Viale Cristoforo Colombo to the west and Viali Asia and Europa to the north and south. The relation makes clear that the programme was exceptionally complex from the functional, distributive, technical and economic points of view, while also demanding a strongly representative architectural image. The proposal answers this brief through an extremely clear compositional matrix: seven long walls arranged parallel to the longitudinal axis of the site. These generate four linear building bodies, each different in height, depth and thickness, conceived as distinct organisms but tied together within a single ordered system. The project therefore avoids both the fragmentation of separate pavilions and the simplification of a single undifferentiated megastructure. Order is established through parallelism, spacing, thickness and hierarchy. The tallest block, seven storeys high and facing Viale Asia, contains the hotel and its related services together with commercial activities and offices. At the centre of the site, a lower but much broader body houses the principal collective functions: congress halls, the auditorium and exhibition areas. Between these two major volumes, the project inserts its most significant civic device: a great distribution gallery conceived as a kind of multi-level internal street. Crossed by stairs and lifts, balconies and bridges, and accessible both from the east and west ends and from the main internal programmes, this long space is not treated as residual circulation. Because shops, restaurants, offices and other activities open directly onto it, the gallery becomes what the relation explicitly calls a true “social condenser”, capable of transforming movement into public interaction. The congress parallelepiped, 160 metres long and 45 metres deep, is defined by two pairs of walls that support the steel roof trusses and absorb within their 3.70-metre cavities stairs, lifts, service lifts and plant distribution. The main hall can host 6,000 seated people and can also be divided into three smaller halls. The 2,000-seat auditorium and two further congress halls, themselves divisible but also connectable into one larger space, are placed at basement level. A long foyer with direct access from Viale Europa is dimensioned so that multiple events may take place simultaneously without conflict. Technical plants are concentrated in an isolated tower placed at the eastern corner of the site. Construction is based on traditional techniques: reinforced concrete for the vertical structures and most floor slabs, prestressed concrete double-T beams for the large-span floor of the congress block, and metal trusses for the roof. Brick and wood are the predominant finishes, also used internally with acoustic intent. On the exterior, bricks larger than standard are used to produce a monumental Roman wall: a compact, oversized mass cut by vertical slits running the full height of the elevations and revealing the depth of the construction. The project thus gives the congress centre an image of civic severity and urban permanence, rooted in measure, thickness and the disciplined power of the wall.