In this blog, Odile Lamy – Conseil des arts e des lettres du Québec Residency at the BSR from April to June 2026 – reflects on her project “Pines of Rome“.
After working with wood buildings for many years, I have come to believe that timber architecture begins with the life of trees. My research is rooted in a desire to better understand the tree species we build with and a journey to cure my own plant blindness by dwelling on la vie des plantes, to borrow the title of a book by philosopher Emanuele Coccia. Thinking of Rome, there was only one tree I could study. Whether called italian stone pines, domestic pines or umbrella pines, the pines of Rome (Pinus pinea) need no introduction. Their presence in the city is ubiquitous. Yet to the passing tourist they often remain a background to architecture and scenes of daily life, a mere visual trope. I was eager to learn more.
On my first week at the British School at Rome in early April, we set out on a group tour of the city and I made a pivotal encounter: the stumps of twelve unstable pines felled only a few weeks prior on Via dei Fori Imperiali. It was my first of many long walks in Rome and the missing pines became the geographical center I would naturally gravitate back to. I wondered what had happened to the timber. I kept dreaming of finding it and filling my studio with the broken bodies of these towering giants. Would it not be an incredibly meaningful material to build with?
The twelve felled pines became the reference point of my study on the life of trees and the passage of time in the remains of Ancient Rome. I walked the city with Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio’s guidebooks to Rome in hand and wondered how many pines towered over the antiquities and churches when he wrote them in 1554, and how many pines will remain when I come back. Weakened by decades of human intervention, old age and the impacts of climate change, the trees now face the dual threat of consecutive infestations by the pine shoot beetle (Tomicus destruens) and the pine tortoise scale (Toumeyella pavicornis). On a short train ride outside of Rome, defoliated trees begin to appear, until I find myself surrounded by pine forests turned into graveyards. Their future is uncertain.
To document and remember, I draw an almost accurate record of the pines overlooking the Baths of Caracalla, the Arch of Constantine and the Forum of Caesar. From the architectural plan sprout the trees that defined my experience on site. Ancient buildings and monuments become a background to the study of plants.
It is through the pine branches and their threatened life that I observe architecture during my residency: the partially defoliated pines growing near the Temple of Neptune in Paestum, whose fate is foreshadowed by the piles of wood chips and dead stumps that greet visitors on their walk from the train station to the ancient city; the ghost trees of the Castelporziano Presidential Estate, where ripe pine cones seem to hang in mid-air, nested among dead branches, their life cycle abruptly interrupted. The trees come and go, and the traces of architecture remain. I think about the longevity of stone over wood.
I did not find the timber of the pines felled on Via dei Fori Imperiali. I do not think that the great cultural significance they had in life was carried in death. Perhaps we can remedy that.
