POZZO DI SAN PATRIZIO, WELL OF ST. PATRICKS
PARTLY UNDERGROUND ROOMS AND BUILDINGS FOR WATER, ICE, AND MIDGETS
Rome,
Bologna, Cerveteri, Mantova, Herculaneum, Italy
Client:
The American Academy in Rome, Rome Prize
Author andDesigner: Mary-Ann Ray
During a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, this project documented 7 spaces throughout Italy - Partly Underground Rooms and Buildings for Water, Ice, and Midgets. These spaces are often works of civil engineering with highly specific programs built between Etruscan times and the late Renaissance. To our modern eyes, these spaces are peculiar and abstractly beautiful rooms - including a spherical icehouse near Bologna, a maze of midget room for the Mantuan court, and an Etruscan tomb with a simulated bedroom seamlessly machined from the tufa bedrock. This photograph of the double helix well in Orvieto 'unrolls' the space of the interior elevation of the cylinder. This was accomplished by photographing every window from every aligned window, then intertwining the strings of photographs.