ROME, ITALY Rome East: A City of Collective Rituals

Rome is a still life, a city made by the accumulation of pieces, of parts without a whole. Circuses, theatres, forums, villas, aqueducts and all sorts of ancient and modern structures are juxtaposed to relate one another and with the landscape, without an overall predefined order. As such, Rome offers an alternative to the contemporary paradigm of urbanization. Where urbanization embodies the endless field of economic relationships and managerial practices through the neutral and scaleless dimension of the grid, Rome is a composition of finite and discrete forms that claims the crucial role of architecture in reinventing a political idea of the collective.
The proposal focuses on the east sector of Rome, traditionally the poorest and most neglected part of the city, characterized by stark contrasts in the urban fabric and by a fluid and unstable population mix. The area produces extreme living conditions but also a savage energy which suspends life between fantasy and survival. Rather than providing specific solutions, the project proposes a vision for the city of Rome through a series of interventions that aim to mobilize such energy through form, substituting function or program with the collective action of a subject. As such the proposal intends to construct a horizon for the architectural process that goes beyond both the immediacy of activism and the normative character of the masterplan to instead embrace the savage power of architecture of bringing people to act and live together.