The Steps of Home and the Steps of Rome

I am heading to Rome this summer for a couple of weeks as a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome. Friends and some colleagues who have known me for some time were quick to ask “Why Italy again? Why not London or Paris or Prague or Switzerland?” My stock answer to that question comes from Harry Lime (as played by Orson Welles in “The Third Man”):

"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Not that I advocate war and chaos as a catalyst for great artistic leaps, but despite several millennia of imperial rise and fall, construction and wanton destruction, Rome will always have a special place for me as an architect and a lover of life. Much has been written on the glory and power and romance and chaos that Rome has left in her wake, and I write not so good…..so I will be brief and stick to stairs, Vespas and prosciutto.

I’m not interested in studying classical building orders or finding the perfect Corinthian column, but every time I have visited the Eternal City, I have been bowled over by the overwhelming layers of history and urban fabric and building technologies past and present from which I always learn something as a designer.

San Francisco, like Rome, has seven famous hills (The Beranlium, The Telegraphian, The Potrerotine, The Rinconium, etc.) and as a resident of San Francisco, I have always been fascinated by all of the urban fabric of the stairwalks throughout its’ hilly neighborhoods. While in Rome, I will be mapping, sketching and photographing stairwalks throughout the city, including the monumental, the sacred, the seats of power, and the everyday neighborhood stairs. Also, I should mention that my desktop calendar of daily Italian phrases says (for July 29th): Salire le scale fa molto bene alla salute delle gambe (Climbing the stairs is very good for your legs’ health)

 Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday” (IMDb.com)

As a card-carrying urbanite and lover of food and Mediterranean climate, I look forward to wallowing in the density and chaos of a city of 400,000 scooters, with the open-air markets, decent public transportation, fountains that you can drink from, and fresh pasta, bread, and espresso from Giacomo the Fruttivendolo on the corner. Although my house is almost as old as Italy has been around as a country, there is still a lot to learn from a city that has been continuously occupied (as a City!) for over 2000 years, in a country that never really wanted to be a country.

Kevin Killen, AIA, LEED® AP
Director, Residential Studio