Rome by leaps and bounds

All cities grow on different basis – they develop and transform, even if as a result from controlled strategies or simply from the natural inertia of the society we live in. When referred to development – territorial administration, circulation flows, public activities or even technological advance – they all leave their print on a city’s image.

Striding over time, a wide variety of steps of development have been strongly marking each period in which they took place. Whether it is about different historical periods, different building typologies or even topographical level changes, there are always strong cuts in the urban grid that hinder the circulation flows. However, the deep marks left on the urban ground, highlighting separate areas of different tissues have been continuously growing stronger.

The idea of limits of the city represents the main focus of analysis and the aim of trespassing them by leaping over and binding the banks that are being generated by the cuts turns into the main theme of the proposal.

Thus there can be distinguished three different kinds of limit typologies.

On the one hand, the planar limit is generated either due to different uses or building configurations that turn their outlines into boundaries that isolate them from the rest, or due to topographical concerns that simply cut the ground apart. On the other hand the linear limit comes out of the interstitial spaces that remain left outside the mentioned plans and often strengthen the barriers within the city. Eventually the spot limit could be a more particular type but however it can be identified in the points where one or more linear limits meet, therefore increase their nature.

From a more abstract point of view, “Rome by leaps and bounds” is aiming to leap across not only the physical but also the temporal thresholds. Precisely because the limits are the result of different steps of development within the city, trespassing the physical barriers implies jumping from a historical time to another. This is the reason why the area chosen to develop the concept consists of a historical barrier – Le Mura Aureliane – that with time got to generate a strong segregation along its path.

The aim of the proposal is to define an urban strategy able to contain a wide variety of individual interventions – that can span from a building to ephemeral architecture – and able to adapt to multiple conditions. Therefore, the proposals are minimal in order to achieve a major sustainable response.

Nevertheless there are certain key points along the wall that permit intervention to be done in order to break the barriers by jumping across them and stitching the city together, improving spatial qualities of the area in a cost effective and eco-friendly manner.