I progetti di Oswald Mathias Ungers per la città di Treviri. Questioni di composizione architettonica
Creators: name: D’Alessandro, Martina <1982>
Publisher: name: Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna
Year: 2011
Subjects: ICAR/14 Composizione architettonica e urbana

description: Abstract
This PhD thesis focuses on two projects carried out by Oswald Mathias
Ungers in the city of Trier. More specifi cally, this study focuses on the
relationship between composition principles, architectural forms, historical
context and the nature of the city where these buildings have been
built.
The works carried out by Ungers in Trier are unique experiences - if
taken in this master’s works context - and each one of them refl ects - in
its specifi c project and architectural composition theme - the results - in
terms of design - of a complex research on the fundamentals of architecture
carried out by Ungers in more than fi ve decades of his activity.
The theoretical and compositional experiment aspect is one of the main
subjects to defi ne these buildings in terms of architecture. This aspect
is so crucial that it is possible to consider them as an example of radical
and specifi c experiences, referred to a specifi c place and based on a
specifi c theoretical corpus.
More specifi cally, this study focuses on the design activity carried out
by Ungers in this city, mainly between the 80s and 90s and in the fi rst
decade of the 21st century. It puts forward an interpretation that does
not only defi ne the essential features, elements and questions lying behind
these two architectures, but fi rst and foremost analyzes the theoretical,
methodological and compositional relationship between Ungers
and Trier, his adopted city. An increasingly closer relationship between
the architect and his city highlights the wider relationship network established
between the place and the projects carried out by Ungers in
this city and makes it possible to understand the importance of Trier in
the work of this architect, in his education and in his way to see, think
and make architecture.
The projects analyzed - the Thermen am Forum Museum (1988-1996)
and the Kaiserthermen entrance hall (2003-2007) - were analyzed in
terms of their architectural composition in an attempt to highlight the
poetry of these architectures and to fi nd out their progressive, rational
- and therefore transmissible - character. This study is an attempt to assess
and unveil the compositional themes characterizing these projects
while detecting the compositional principles lying behind the works
and verifying the design process through which such principles were
translated into architecture.
Looking at these works as architectural composition examples makes
it possible to clarify Ungers’ hermeneutic relationship established with
the city’s history and structure.
More specifi cally, the main subject of this thesis is the relationship between
the architect, his city and history in the architectural solutions offered
by two exemplary case studies, which were both built and placed
in the historical city center of Trier and both connected with the ancient
core of the city. The Thermen am Forum Museum and the Kaiserthermen
entrance hall projects are - though being developed at different
times of Ungers’ architectural life and though being extremely different
in terms of approach to their context, due to their architectural image -
two works that can be compared with the historical heritage of the city
and this makes them ideal examples of the relationship between architectural
forms, history and environment.