PBL #2- Pantheon

The PBL we had to address:


The Pantheon_ DELEMA

For the last several days a near riot has taken place on the Piazza della

Rotunda as people from all walks of life protest the purchase of a crypt in the Pantheon by the wealthy Prime Minister. Unbelievable!.... Unheard of!.... This is just not done.

It is not money that gets you a burial site in the Pantheon.

What can be done? Many people, rich and poor, from the government and from the church have met behind closed doors. They determined that a committee should be formed to evaluate the architectural layout and to recommend that the building be converted to new uses to circumvent this outrageous act by this high government official.

The committee will be made up of individuals representing constituencies in the population with direct interest in the outcome of the discussion.

Members of the committee will look at the construction and history of the Pantheon and will determine its future use. The committee will include a church official from the Vatican, a monarchist, a communist, an architectural historian, and a person of the arts preferably a film director or a computer expert.

Considered in the discussion will be the configuration of the building, the conceptual significance of the dome, and the use of light and its effect on time and space.

They will take into account the evolution of the building from mythology to Christianity and its relation to architectural design, and how it will be reconfigured to serve the new function.

A difficult task in lieu of the precise design of this building.... Could it be added to in some way..... We will have to wait and see...

We approached the problem as a meeting between four different people representing different views of what to do with the Pantheon. We played out the meeting on video (posted below) and in class we were a news crew playing the video to their viewers. We also had a commercial to break up the meeting for the decision time.

Reflection:

With this PBL, my group did much better in solving the problem and presenting the solution to the class. We tired to use the critiques from our first PBL to improve our next one. In this PBL, we tried to be more creative in our presentation and made sure that we addressed the problem.

Through our research of the Pantheon, we felt that there four major areas needed to be represented in the meeting. After narrowing down possible ways to present the meeting, my group decided upon a video presentation, which can be viewed below. To add interest, we molded the video into a news piece including live reporting and a live commercial in class. I think the audience enjoyed the presentation almost as much as my group members and I had while creating and presenting it. Overall, I think we learned a lot about the Pantheon and about how creative we can be even with a limited amount of time together.