Competition entry for theBuilding of Water and light at the E42

Rome

Competitions, projects, proposals

For the great imaginary event of E42 the 1942 Universal Exhibition of Rome that was never staged, a competition was announced for this fantastic building. No prize was awarded and the palace was not built. What Ponti's project proposed grasping the spectacular nature of the theme, was a non-building: a very high and slender screen, made up of two parallel glass walls, through the transparent ends of which the luminous trajectories of moving elevators could be seen, an idea that Ponti revived, thirty years later, in his competition project for the Plateau Beaubourg; in front of the screen, a display of flowing water; the back of the screen was in one version a sort of huge heraldic folio, bearing the coats of arms of all the nations, almost a curtain behind which the spectacle of the exhibition was prepared. It was the concept of a building as a curtain, a pure theatrical structure, that led to the project's rejection.