Dogma

Via Giulia Augusta

Aquileia was the quintessential Roman city. Founded as Latin colony, Aquileia became the epicenter of a territorial system that included the North East plains, the Adriatic Sea and the Alps. Like many Roman cities it was founded as a gridiron organized along the cardo and decumano. The elongated form in the direction of the decumano manifests a strong relationship between Aquileia and the Strada Giulia Augusta, the road that connected the sea to the alps. Our proposal for the improvement of the Strada Giulia Augusta recognizes the geographical dimension of the road, simplifies its trajectory and marks it with simple and clear signs to articulate a legible measure for this artifact. The signs on the road materialize relationships between the road and the ruins of the ancient town – inserted along the sidewalks in the form of extremely simple and mundane objects such as steps, ramps, platforms, and benches. These elements form a visual field in which guides the eyes to connect, collect, and perimeter, following the particles that make up the landscape and the city. The visitor’s gaze lingers on the textures of the materials, on the roughness or smoothness of the coat, on the generosity or subtlety of the joints, on the different colors of the stones, on the alignments of the trees…. 
In essence the project proposes a redesign of the sidewalk which widens the pedestrian area and narrows the vehicle space. A limestone curb of Aurisina runs along the entire extension of the sidewalk thus becoming the basso continuo on which the sequence of urban events is set. The curb is marked by inserts in dark Piasentina stone which symbolizes the actus, the basic unit of the Rome measurement system for length and distance. All equipment such as lighting, bus stops, benches, canopies and entrances to the archeological area are placed in sequence along the road according to the rhythm of the actus made visible in the black marks on the sidewalk.