Piranesi Mention 2022: Reconstruction of the Roman Theatre

The newly implemented reconstruction project of the Small Roman Theatre in Pula is an example of an extremely consistent authorial stance, in which historical fragments were by way of modern language assembled in a wondrous architectural collage – a new urban assemblage.

The layers of history and archaeology that have been deposited for centuries were read and affirmed through this collage project and process of autonomous fragments. Every single historical element – late antique, Byzantine, medieval, Austro-Hungarian or more recent – is differentiated and unmasked in the amalgam. Nothing tries to be what is not, nor become something else. Everything is what it is and how it is. The newly designed structure is constructed in a restrained contemporary architectural language, different from the existing historical expressions.

For this realisation, the Pula architect Emil Jurcan has already received several valuable awards in the field of architecture: the Croatian Architects’ Association Bernardo Bernardi Award and the Piranesi international architectural honourable mention, and he has just been nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture, or the Mies van der Rohe Award.

The Small Roman Theatre in Pula was built during the reign of Emperor Augustus in the first century, and was used in more recent history as a summer stage for many years. But about twenty years ago it was closed to the public due to serious structural damage. The reconstruction of the ancient theatre was entrusted to the architect Emil Jurcan, and the design took a whole decade on account of successive archaeological finds at the site, calling for numerous changes and adjustments to the project.