Trajan’s Hollow

Although this second-century monument located in the heart of Rome has been the object of hundreds of years of study, Trajan’s Hollow uncovers aspects of the column curiously omitted amidst all this attention, manifesting the lacunae in various paradigms of historical inquiry: this work rereads the column and its legacy through the simple act of prioritising the embodied occupation of its interior over the analysis of its exterior narrative frieze. By focusing on traces of workmanship (chisel marks, seam lines, tool dimensions), material attributes (provenance, behavior, constraints, change in qualities over millennia), and the experience of habitation (interior atmosphere, circulation, functional details), the project develops an alternative understanding of the historical artefact and of its role in contemporary design. AUTHORS: Joshua G. Stein is the co-director of the Data Clay Network (www.data-clay.org), a forum for the exploration of digital techniques applied to ceramic materials, and the founder of Radical Craft (www.radical-craft.com), a Los Angeles-based studio evolving newly grounded approaches to the challenges posed by virtuality, velocity, and globalisation. He was a 2010-11 Rome Prize Fellow in Architecture, and is currently professor of architecture at Woodbury University. Michael J. Waters is an assistant professor of Renaissance Architecture, Italian Renaissance Art, and the History of Technology at Columbia University. He earned his PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and was previously the Scott Opler Research Fellow in Architectural History at Worcester College, University of Oxford. 250 colour images