TEAM:

Roberto Ferlito creative director

Alessandra Faticanti coordinator

Agita Putnina, main architect

Joanna Rodriguez Noyola, architect

Kazuyo Nishida, architect

Toby Nielson, architect

Cittá Alessandrina. 2010 Rome, Italy

Assigned Typology:    International Competition

Project:            Project design

Client:              Rome Municipality

Project phase:        3rd prize

Date:            2009

 The Alessandrino district then as another great romantic example.

Rome is a four-dimensional city. Everything already exists in Rome; nothing escapes in Rome.

It does not change the feeling in the suburbs where, in this case, the alchemical aspect is linked to the romantic idea of the ruin; more exactly of memory, of the extremely legible dimension of time.

The bond of the city with its territory is a dialectical or rather colloquial, but above all spontaneous bond. For this same reason, the citizen has developed a unique capacity in the world; he adapts, he “makes do,” he inhabits public spaces by appropriating them through successive colonizations.

The city responds by leaving its neutral character unchanged.

The idea about the city is thus a “weak” idea, in the sense, however, of flexible, and therefore indestructible, eternal. Factors of suggestion take over from those of transformation; they are endogenous factors and must be gathered and interpreted.

A city that only needs to be re-perceived.

In our project for the Alexandrian cultural center, there is this idea, a constant combination of spontaneous-romantic (thus magical) tradition and receptive-contemporary simplicity.

One concept : The CONTEMPORARY RUDERE.

On the one hand, the ruin, the memory, the legible fourth dimension, the autochthonousness, the ability to be accepted, the relationship with the landscape; on the other hand, the contemporary project, the empty, public, multi-functional, spontaneous, adaptable and colonizable space.

Identity and multiplicity at the same time.

These are the themes we want to address by traveling within the Roman tradition made of public-private or full-empty relations (multiplication of empty space and densification of public space) and relations with green, almost wild and integral.

Thus an alienating and dimensionless spatial atmosphere contrasting contemporaneity and tradition is formed.

An extremely characteristic landscape is formed in Rome. A “colorful” landscape.

Specifically then, the design of the cultural center involves the multiplication of public spaces from the limits set by the announcement. What remains compressed between them is our “contemporary ruin”; ruin precisely because it is residual space in relation to the void, permeable to three hundred and sixty degrees and functional both inside and on the roof. A large multiple and flexible space in continuous relationship with the outside. An overlapping building of multiple combinations.