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PRODID:-//Memento EPFL//
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SUMMARY:The Colosseum Factory / TPOD
DTSTART:20240529T150000
DTEND:20240529T180000
DTSTAMP:20260916T042517Z
UID:37b63ba4e884a42be7df0773db1f473e207a9520afa58b8cd0098753
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Maria Shéhérazade Giudici\nThis lecture is part of the cours
 e Harmony and Conflicts by Marson Korbi\, within The Doctoral Program of E
 DAR\, EPFL\n\nThe Colosseum Factory\, by Maria Shéhérazade Giudici\nAt 
 the apogee of the Flavian dynasty\, the construction of the Colosseum did 
 not only represent the power of the Emperor\, but\, rather\, an inter-clas
 s alliance between the court and aristocratic landowners\, small entrepren
 eurs – often freedmen – and waged workers. The building itself can be 
 seen as nothing but an act of wealth redistribution on a massive scale. In
  this sense\, its construction represented a tool to share the spoils of
  colonial violence with all strata of Roman society. In the following cent
 uries\, the Colosseum would be repaired\, restored\, and reused in a range
  of vastly different ways – from quarry to manufactory\, to workers’ h
 ousing\, to touristic site. Some projects wanted to obliterate everything 
 about the old building\, and some wanted to preserve its form. However\, 
 what none of them could do was to recreate the social context that had sha
 ped the very materiality of the initial building: the qualities of the or
 iginal bricks and masonry were indeed profoundly informed by the labour co
 nflicts of the early Empire. Their aesthetic and tectonic character was ex
 tremely specific\, and essentially impossible to replicate under different
  conditions\, even just a few generations later.\n\nThe talk will argue t
 hat the context of a building is not only its physical setting\, but\, ult
 imately\, the nexus of political tensions that orient the economy of its c
 onstruction. The presentation will follow the constructive vicissitudes 
 of the Colosseum from its inception to its various adaptations\, analysing
  the way in which different forms of labour organisation impacted its arch
 itectural qualities – from the most mundane material aspects\, to its mo
 numental form and urban presence.\n\nMaria Shéhérazade Giudici is the fo
 under of publishing and research platform Black Square and the editor of A
 A Files\; she leads the History and Theory course at the School of Archite
 cture of the Royal College of Art\, and heads the PhD Programme of the Arc
 hitectural Association.\n\n\nImage: Fragment from Domenico Fontana\, Aeria
 l view showing the path of the Obelisk from the Circus of Nero to its new 
 position in St Peter’s square\, 1590
LOCATION:GR A3 31 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==GR%20A3%2031
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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