Open Terminal
A New Portal at Rome’s Termini Station
Competition | Jan 2014
Open Terminal creates an activated parking destination for motorini and bicycles and places importance on public space while maintaining a sheltered zone for public transit commuters to store their units. This new node will serve as a portal allowing users to connect from different forms of transportation. The park atop the parking spaces is derived from Rome’s famous Sanpietrini paving and their presence throughout the city. As the paving ages and its substrate loosens it begins to heave and become displaced to form new topographies. In this park this unique shifting event is exaggerated and rationalized into planes to allow for comfortable and walkable surfaces. As Rome contemplates the gradual removal of the Sanpietrini (established by Pope Sixtus V in the 16th century) due in part to the above mentioned characterisic this proposal aims to preserve its memory. The walkable texture of the park is developed from the geometric arrangement of the Sanpietrini and is taken as a template in which local grasses can grow in the space once occupied by the individual stones.
As a way of projecting the growing need for motorino and bicycle parking spaces in Rome into the future, several locations were identified which can serve as prime locations to connect commuters to others means of public transit. These identified zones occur at nodes in the city in which several transit services currently intersect. The nodes are as follows: A. Piazza del Popolo, B. Terminal Gianicolo, C. Piazza Bernardino da Feltre, D. Largo di Torre Argentina, E. Circo Massimo, and F. Termini.
