AT chats to Mojan Kavosh about winning the British School at Rome’s 2024 Scholarship in Architecture and plans to walk an eight-day itinerary devised in 1763 for visitors on the Grand Tour.

Congratulations on winning the 2024 Rome Scholarship. What prompted you to apply?
Thank you for the recognition. My motivation to apply to the Rome Scholarship was prompted by a combination of factors. My passion lies in way-finding through historical narratives and exploring the potential of drawing to analyse context as a dynamic process; I’m keen to explore this potential, particularly during these incredibly digital times. I was drawn to the school’s perspective on architecture in contemporary culture and the enduring importance of history as a source of knowledge and experience. In the summer of 2022 I cycled from Palermo, to eventually arrive in Rome for the first time. The array of diverse spatial episodes during this trip further inspired me to apply. Since completing my masters at Central Saint Martins in 2020, I have continued to engage in the exploration of my project, as I don’t believe that the span of one year is enough to fully comprehend the depth of thesis projects. I believe that these projects continue to resonate within us, and I wholeheartedly embrace that sentiment. The opportunity to be among enthused endeavours within the BSR community is also a significant motivator and a chance to access invaluable resources, networks and mentorships. The British School at Rome interests me immensely as the perfect environment in which to undertake academic and field research simultaneously.

What will you be working on when you get there?
At first I seek to walk Giuseppe Vasi’s Istruttivo Itinerario which was published in 1763 for a visiting audience of primarily British and Northern European Grand Tourers. His itinerary for Rome, based on its monuments, is a break down of Nolli’s Pianta Grande split into an 8 day walk, of which over a half of the recommended sites are church buildings. In the 18th c. Rome’s antique ruins and medieval campaniles were accessible and fully integrated in daily life, before they became so conserved, iconic and monetised. Vasi’s focus on churches cannot fully define them as monuments but it points towards their enduring accessibility. Depicting a largely preserved area, Nolli’s map is an exemplary gauge for shifting notions of ‘public’: Rome’s churches epitomise the city’s physical presence as a constant factor to measure these shifts against. During my time at the BSR, I will gather information for an encyclopaedic visual record of the abundance of churches within the Aurelian walls. Then I will make a map; drawing in planometric view from below as a static yet holistic view that can incorporate the vertical dimension as a more comprehensive reading of such structures. I hope to bridge between Nolli’s horizontal rendering of these commemorative spaces as extensions of the street and the hyperrealistic digitisation of cartography today.

What do you think you’ll do next?
Looking ahead, I see several paths that I may pursue following my time at the BSR. I’m interested in furthering my pursuits, potentially through a phD programme or other research opportunities, whether in academia or the public sector. Building upon the experiences I gain, I hope to delve deeper into the application of my work in practice and contribute to ongoing issues concerning city planning and public space scarcity. Ultimately, I welcome the element of chance in the completing of this project and the discussions that it will spark.

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Mojan Kavosh was born in Tehran and grew up in the UK from the age of ten. She studied architecture at the University of Newcastle and completed her MArch at Central St. Martins, University of the Arts London, in 2020. She has been living and developing her work in Berlin, Germany, since 2021. The Rome Scholarship in Architecture is awarded to a young architect from the UK or the Commonwealth who has shown exceptional promise in their student work or early professional career. The scholar spends three months at the BSR undertaking a self-directed programme of research, which may take the form of an architectural project, a theoretical study, an historical investigation, or indeed a combination of all three. The subject Mojan Kavosh has proposed to study during her scholarship is ‘Terrafirma: Surveying was Art before the Advent of Digital Cartography and the Paradigm Shift in Map Making’.