Ricerc@Sapienza

Despite the presence of so many outstanding works of architecture, the design of
public space in Rome is almost always indefi nite and of a low quality. The obelisks,
fountains and monuments marking its piazzas and streets rarely correspond with
urban furniture of any particular quality or capability to defi nitively shape the
space of the city. Cobblestone pavers do not provide public space with that extra
quality which makes it sensitive to use and at the scale of the city’s inhabitants.
The competition announced some years ago by the City of RomeUffi
cio Roma
Capitale for the renewal of the path through the historic centre linking the Trevi
Fountain with the Pantheon offered one of the fi rst occasions for rethinking
the design of public space in the city. The competition was followed by only
a few projects and of scarce importance, lacking any capacity to defi nitively
redeem urban space or provide this path with any particular relevance, unlike
examples offered by other European cities during the same period. Beginning
with the project submitted by the author to the aforementioned competition,
the proposed text will investigate a methodology for redesigning urban space
based on two concepts, corresponding with two categories of urban furniture:
rooted elements, the stable elements that model the surface of the city and
the support to assembled elements, the mobile and adjustable structures more
directly compromised by the functional values of elements of urban furniture.
It is my belief that the organisation of these two typologies of elements may
provide the city with a greater defi nition of its public environments and redeem
the anonymity to which so many of its most representative spaces have been
consigned.