ISLANDS OF NOLLI'S ROME

This exhibition is part of a project that explores the relationship of buildings within void space of the city. The project looks at the history of maps and how they are visualized, and it explores the relationship of the city with the people within it. The research was based on the 1748 map by Giambattista Nolli.

Looking at the visual representation of the Nolli map one questions if it’s representing features correctly. "An acurate map must tell white lies" -Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps 2018. Of course, Nolli does this by representing buildings differently based on their relationship with public space and whether they are historical buildings. When you start to dissect the map and isolate the solid and void spaces you start to form solid masses; these masses can be symbolised as islands. When you compare these objects to the drawings by O.M. Ungers' in “Berlin: A Green Archipelago 1977”, there are resemblances between the spaces in Rome defined by the dense solid masses within the city and the urban spaces of Berlin that form islands.

The final piece explores some of the key themes that were looked at in the project. Rather than taking the form of Nolli’s map the object expresses the relationship of the map and the islands within with the people who either walk within the city or observe the city from above when they look at a map. The human like shadow that is created from the model symbolises the human footprint that exists within the city, created by the artificial islands made by humanity.