Speculum is an interior project in an Umbertine building in Rome, near the Baths of Diocletian. The apartment of about 60 square meters, with independent access from the internal courtyard of the building, consists of three vaulted rooms separated by arches and has a not uncommon feature in Rome: it has archaeological remains below the level of the floor, a roman well and walls in opus reticolatum.
In this case, despite being an interior, one of the open themes is the relationship between building and ground. Between what the soil carries with it in terms of memory treasure. We have a lower level, a negative space, where the matter is removed, and a positive, higher space, in which this is added. The project is based on the need to divide the room into three functionally independent environments. The rewriting of space takes place in the form of obsessive rhythm, of fragmentation and displacement of perception. A glass floor, supported by a structural grid mesh, highlights the historical stratification. Above this, a new volume places itself hierarchically “behind” the existing one, but manifests its presence with a sequence of vertical lines that are reflected on the glass surface, generating a visual overlap between the new and the ruins. The volume is a closed and continuous shell, lowered with respect to the arches, so as to keep the spatial continuity of the pre-existence legible.
Once the threshold of the new volume has been crossed, the glass grid on the ground is offset from the existing masonry even more clearly and the internal surfaces become “speculum”, fragmented and mobile mirrors. Here figure and background overlap. Perspective perception is altered. Space is no longer fixed. History mixes. Past, present and future.