The Nolli Map and Urban Theory

Jim Tice
Department of Architecture, University of Oregon
Posted: May 10, 2005

The significance of the Nolli map for historians, scholars, students and practicing architects
is that it gives a unique view of Romes "innate character." It vividly reveals the topographic
and spatial structure of the city, countering a tendency in contemporary architectural
history and criticism to examine objects as isolated monuments outside the very context
that give them life and meaning. The principle ideas that animate the Nolli map can be
summarized as follows:

Plan vs. Pictorial Representation

The Nolli map, as an ichnographic plan, presents the city with an exactitude that allows one
to immediately compare size, position and shape. This is to be contrasted with a pictorial
representation that, because of perspective diminution of objects of the same size,
convergence of lines, and overlapping shapes necessarily distorts the image in order to
simulate a perceptual point of view. Undeniably this way of seeing and understanding the
city has advantages and yields an intuitive "feel" much as any picture or photograph might
provide. Nonetheless the Nolli method, like any scaled plan of presentation, has distinct
advantages. It provides a conceptual view that enables a consistent frame of reference
based on exact and comparable information and avoids the perspective distortion and
fragmentation noted above and the pre-editing implicit in a singular point of view.

Solid/Void

The Nolli map provides an immediate and intuitive understanding of the citys urban form
through the simple yet effective graphic method of rendering solids as dark gray (with
hatch marks) and rendering voids as white or light shades of gray to represent vegetation,
paving patterns and the like. The city, thus conceived as an enormous mass that has been
"carved" away to create "outdoor" rooms is rendered intelligible and vivid through this
simple graphic convention.

Topography/Space

Nolli's map conveys an understanding of the citys topographic and geo-spatial structure,
the patterns of private and public buildings, and their relationship to the entire urban

ensemble. This encourages an understanding of the building, not as isolated event, but one
that is deeply and intrinsically embedded in the fabric of the city.

Figure/Ground

The idea of solid/void is closely related to the idea of figure/ground. The dark and light
patterns of the city reveal the manner in which public space in the city is conceived no less
carefully than building. In Rome, public or semi-public space possesses a distinct and
identifiable character whether it is a church interior, palace courtyard or public urban
space. The Piazza Navona, for example, is easily identified as a "figural" element in the city,
with the surrounding buildings acting as a back up field or "ground" into which the element
has been placed, or rather, carved away. In contrast, the Modern city reverses this
conceptual reading so that building is always seen as active figural object while space is
imagined (if at all) as a kind of recessive, formless ether or receptacle that provides the
setting for the object. In Rome, solid and void readings have the capacity to be interpreted
as either figure or ground.

Urban Dialectics

The Nolli map demonstrates the principle of contextual design evident throughout the city
of Rome at the scale of the building and the scale of the city as a whole. The relationship
between "outside and inside" and building and place are distinctive features that NorbergSchulz has called the "genius loci" of Rome. The detailed rendering of streets, piazze and
buildings in relationship to one another underscores how profoundly Nolli understood this
quality. The context conditions the building and the building in turn exerts an outward
pressure on the city fabric. The dialectical relationship between buildings and their context
a two way streetsuggests a dynamic interplay between solid and void, figure and
ground and the new and the old. The evolution of the city and its formal and spatial
structure, therefore, is seen, not as a static proposition, but rather as a dynamic, highly
charged and even volatile discourse of competing pressures, issues, needs, and desires
both in urban and human terms.