LOCATION: Rome, Italy CLIENT: Loyola University Chicago, John Felice Rome Center DESIGN AND ARTISTIC DIRECTION: Ignazio Lo Manto  COLLABORATORS: Alessandro Franchetti Pardo, Andrea Ricci, Enzo Venezia, Davide Curci (Rendering) PROJECT COORDINATOR: Alessandro Franchetti Pardo MEP: Marco Musmeci, Massimo Mercuri, Livia Musmeci STRUCTURES: Francesco Del Tosto (Solidus) FIRE SYSTEM: Daniele Glingler LANDSCAPE: Flavio trinca LIGHITNG: Gianni Celleno (Elettroged) SAFETY: Attilio De Fazi CONSTRUCTION PROJECT MANAGER: Marina Cimato (Seste Engineering) SITE MANAGEMENT: Hermes Faccini PROJECT MANAGER: Sharon Miura GENERAL CONTRACTOR: XLAM Dolomiti CONSTRUCTION PHASE: 2019-2020   TEXT by Elisabetta Avallone PHOTOGRAPHY by Moreno Maggi

The John Felice Rome Center is the university campus in Rome of Chicago’s Loyola University, one of the most important Jesuit colleges in the US.

The new architectural complex shows great sensitivity to its context, seeking a direct dialogue with the surrounding buildings and site.

The new buildings fit confidently into the existing context, neither concealing nor declaiming their presence. Although clearly a new addition to the whole, they signal a gentle transition from old to new through a series of similarities and differences.

The enclosure created by the existing and new buildings echoes a feature of the wider urban context, and in so doing, completes the overall urban design. The spatial entity created is not so much the result of a series of individual standalone objects as of their mutual interaction.

Indeed, the simple, highly iconic architectural design of the John Felice Rome Center highlights the whole spatial setting, inviting the visitor to move around the grounds exploring the buildings from different angles and perspectives. The program is geared to encouraging the search for the best possible perspective and an appreciation of the constantly changing interactions of the whole with its parts. Indeed, the buildings take on a performative quality, every day presenting to guests and campus members in different guises depending on the different viewpoints.

The materials also collaborate in the demarcation of the spatial context. Brick is the overriding element. This familiar, domestic building material serves to create a visual and physical link between the existing and the new, to modulate the light, impart a reassuring sense of mass, and establish a consistent tangible pattern and color to the architectural ensemble.

Brick, with its particular texture and uniform color, is offset by steel and glass to form geometrical - almost abstract - units that highlight to great effect the relationship of the complex to its spatial context.

The extreme simplicity of the buildings displays no conventional features, nothing that reveals the purpose of the individual elements.

But like any other artwork, an architecture is not just matter or textural consistency. Other aspects contribute to creating its image: the site, the observation point, the effects of the light, and the atmosphere that surrounds it.

The program’s simplicity of form and composition is combined with restraint, precision, technical prowess, and careful study of the light. Indeed, light becomes a physical element in this architecture. It falls on the buildings to reveal their composition and the intersections between the volumes. It imparts form as it reflects off the light-colored flooring inside and the paving outside, establishing a hierarchy among the spaces, signposting distribution pathways, and imbuing the chapel with a special atmosphere and quality.

The varying atmospheres created by light reinforce the range of sensations the visitors receive as they move around the complex taking in the spatial, geometric, visual, tactile and sensory features of the architecture. It is the variation in the light that binds together the different forms.