CONTEMPORARY ROME The quality of urban space in the contemporary city

GIOVANNA PIGA
name: Giovanna Piga
Email: pigagio@gmail.com
WHAT IS THE CONTEMPORARY CITY?
Post-modern city, post-Fordist city, post-industrial city, regional city,
panic city, sprawl city, city state, country city, elementary city, archipelagos
city, it appears that nowadays the term city always needs to be
accompanied by an adjective or a noun, as if alone, its versatile meaning has
been taken away.
The city is no longer taken as a whole, it is not developed anymore
through a comprehensive master-planning, it prevents any rational readings,
any strong principle based instruments capable of governing its growth.
The city is scattered and its planning is discontinuous, fragmentary,
occasional and incoherent.
Scholars named it the sprawl and they impotently watch its constant
process of shattering.
The city is a collection of design objects. It is the generic city of Rem
Koolhaas: liberated from the captivity of center, from the straitjacket of
identity. The generic city breaks with this destructive cycle of dependency: it
is nothing but a reection of present need and present ability. It is the city
without history. It is big enough for everybody. It is easy. It does not need
maintenance. If it gets too small it just expands. If it gets old it just self-
destructs and renews. It is equally excitingor unexciting everywhere. It is
superciala Hollywood studio lot, it can produce a new identity every
Monday morning.
1
CONTEMPORARY ROME The quality of urban space in the contemporary city
GIOVANNA PIGA! 2
The generic city contains all the images of the contemporary city including a
history that sometime becomes a self-caricature.
On the contrary the ideal contemporary city:
is multi-centric, it chooses density as model for its development and
reuse as its strategy;
rejects sprawl in favor of the compact city; accepts complexity as
fundamental for its structure;
supports infrastructures and fast public transportation that connects its
parts, both at urban and suburban levels; it is bicycle and pedestrian
friendly;
counts on public transportation with other cities to limit territorial
congestion and therefore pollution;
is sustainable, tries to efciently use environmental resources; reclaims
and reuse instead of building ex-novo
is interconnected, is wireless, is the city of information, constantly
provides free access to the web for everyone;
facilitates and favors personal meetings, exchanges and social
relationships; offers quality public spaces, parks and well equipped green
areas; allows a contemporary use of ancient spaces and monuments;
fosters contemporary culture; and as a consequence it attracts creativity
and young resources;
encourages public interventions and participant choice; promotes
sensitivity to the territory and avoids exploiting the earth and the vital
resources.
2
MAD OFFICE/ SUPER STAR: A MOBLE CHNA TOWN
NEMESI STUDIO / TRANCTY
NEW WEST LAND / THE BEAR'S WALK
n!STUDIO / RESDENTTY T-STUDIO / DONSOCTY
WEST 8 / VALLEY OF DESRE
7
MAD OFFICE/ SUPER STAR: A MOBLE CHNA TOWN
NEMESI STUDIO / TRANCTY
NEW WEST LAND / THE BEAR'S WALK
n!STUDIO / RESDENTTY T-STUDIO / DONSOCTY
WEST 8 / VALLEY OF DESRE
7
Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Fig. 1 West 8 - Uneternal City -

Urbanism beyond Rome at the 11
th

Venice Biennale, 2008

Fig. 2 Mad Ofce - Uneternal City -

Urbanism beyond Rome at the 11
th

Venice Biennale, 2008
CONTEMPORARY ROME The quality of urban space in the contemporary city
GIOVANNA PIGA! 3
ROME AS THE METAPHOR OF UNFINISHED MODERNITY
Rome presents many characteristic features of the contemporary city.
The inhabited city, no longer contained within the Aurelian walls, but
originating in the spatial and cultural expansion of its historic district in the
ne fabric of the modern city and executed more or less continuously until
World War II, has been joined in the last four decades by a dispersed city
that presents strong discontinuities in the accidental and isolated urban
episodes that occur with no formal relationship to each other, which are
manifested in unplanned and random occurrences.
This is the spontaneous city, illegal and with broad voids and abandoned
spaces, generated by the incompleteness of a local master plan of public
planning. Rome is an example of form vs no form version of the
contemporary city that in different situations is only perceived at metropolitan
scale.
Contemporaneity is intended in at least two ways: the chronological one
that sees the newer city as opposed to the established city, and the one that
considers how the contemporary culture perceives, benets and shapes the
evolving city as the modern culture had done earlier.
Maurizio Marcelloni argues that "Rome appears as the metaphor of
unnished modernity. Its unusual construction as a capital city, the failed
fascist attempt to release it from provincialism, the neglect of urban issues
after World War II. Rome well reects the limits of the many attempts to
modernize the country in over a century. The delay of modernity that
primarily strikes the structure of its public mobility, the organization of the
public administration and the nature of its productive structure have
devastating consequences, and is rooted in the culture of no rules and
illegality on the one hand and that of no government on the other.
3

Fig. 3 MAXXI - Rome, The gate

Fig. 3
CONTEMPORARY ROME The quality of urban space in the contemporary city
GIOVANNA PIGA! 4
DISCONNECTION BETWEEN THE CITY GOVERNANCE AND THE ARCHITECTURAL
CULTURE
The theme of the contemporary city is central and explored in various
disciplines but it appears marginal in public administrative governance.
There exists a considerable disconnection between the citys political and
administrative governance and the output of the architectural and academic
culture. This prevents the integration of the many responsibilities that
politically and productively manage the city and are culturally involved in the
effects that occur in the city without appropriately affecting it.
Rome became an interrupted city because we stopped imagining it"
Giulio Carlo Argan, an art historian and mayor of the city, wrote in 1978 while
launching a broad debate on the future of the city that culminated in the
exhibition "Rome Interrupted"
4
set up at the Trajan Markets in Rome.
Thirty years later in 2008 at the Venice Biennale an entire section of the
exhibition was dedicated to Rome: "Uneternal City"
5
reopens the urban
planning debate on expanding the boundaries of urban horizons of the
contemporary city.
In April 2010 with the emphatic title "Rome 2010-2020: New models for
urban transformation"
6
another international conference was held sponsored
this time by the Town Council.
These listed above are just some of the circumstances in which the
architectural culture has questioned and expressed itself, stimulating
important considerations on the present and, more important, on the future
of the city.
As such, it seems apparent that there is a gap between the thoughts of
various urban disciplines and the work practice, namely "the ability of
transforming analyses and ideas into programs and transforming ideas into
programs, projects, instruments and policies that are adjusted to the new
dimension of the urban issues".
7
QUALITY OF URBAN SPACE WITHIN THE CONTEMPORARY CITY
But there are some encouraging signs of progress. The city has adopted a
new masterplan, a few main projects have been executed, the issues of the
suburbs have been made central in the discussions.
The transformation of urban governance (Rome turned from City of Rome
to Rome Capital in September 20, 2010) should represent a decisive move in
the working phase of strategic planning as well as the Millennium Project
8

that aims to prepare the nomination of Rome to the 2020 Olympics over the
next decade and to make a profound change in the growth of the City.
While waiting for this whole organizational process of the city governance
to start manifesting itself by some real achievement, we can only evaluate
the outcome of fteen years of urban policies and interventions that at
various degrees, have affected the whole city. Some of these projects are
completed while others are still in the process, yet it is possible to outline
some key issues and problems and compare them to different approaches to
urban transformations that have occurred in other countries.
The British School in Rome has recently offered this opportunity by
housing an exhibition entitled Projecting London as the rst of a series of
exhibitions and conferences. The program, Three cities in Flux, is an
investigation into different approaches to urban renewal mainly in Italy and
Britain that will conclude with the conference Rome Today.

Fig. 4 AD magazine published Roma

interrotta a critical remake of the Nolli
Plan by contemporary architects, 1981

Fig. 5 Rome 2010-2020: New models

for urban transformation International
conference sponsored by the City of
Rome
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
CONTEMPORARY ROME The quality of urban space in the contemporary city
GIOVANNA PIGA! 5
The work of Allies and Morrison at the scale of both buildings and
masterplans for London, exhibits a recurring concern for architecture and
urbanism that extends beyond the imposition of an a priori or formal idea.
Their approach is one that focuses on understanding the what and how of
a site which, coupled with a non linear process of investigation, leads to a
response that can change and adapt over time and ensures that it remains
rooted in its context. At the heart of their thinking is a desire to provide non
prescriptive frameworks for development that can allow others to investigate,
test and build real and successful areas of a city as a consequence.
The transformation of the economic bases of the cities is made possible
by a competitiveness based on their new attraction ability: it is therefore
necessary to design scenarios and reliable objectives and to build high
quality projects.
Hence urban transformation should offer an approach to large-scale
projects and these should be included within a global vision that has the
contemporary city as its nal objective, and should be placed within a
strategic vision that indicates a model of urban development for which a city
should strive.
The urban transformations that affected Rome in recent years - such as
the Urban Project Flaminio, the Urban Project Ostiense, Eur, the City of Sport
- have resulted in specic interventions - which involved only small portions
of the well-established city - and the only outcome was the construction of
the new and much praised architecture designed by celebrated architects.
These buildings have been inaugurated and published many times giving the
impression that they are many more.
No doubt these beautiful buildings have merit for Rome reviving the image of
the city in the front pages of newspapers and magazines and not only in the
dedicated architectural magazines. But "they are still conceived as mere
creations of monuments within the city."
9
Such spaces - maintains Alfredo Mela - tend "to some extent to be
fenced off, to be turned into a well-dened container for programs (not
necessarily made only of indoor spaces), a kind of manageable and
reassuring "capsule", suitable for a satisfactory consumer relationship. The
overall effect on the structure of the city is then what we might designate as
"capsulization": the city tends to appear as a series of individual capsules
[...]"
10
What these celebrated new Roman buildings have in common is precisely
their being capsules, "isolated behind locked fences".
They do not open to the urban spaces surrounding them, do not accept nor
interact with the context , they do not stretch out their axes to innervate the
surrounding area. They are closed systems.
Their enclosure prevents the urban renewal and redevelopment of
neighboring areas.
11
Their enclosure is physically reinforced through gates
and walls. The new Richard Meier church built in Tor Tre Teste, apart from
being a place of worship, was also intended to activate a new node within
the dense neighborhood, a gathering place for the community. In fact, the
white wall surrounding it seems to defend the precious work of Meier from
the attack of a hostile suburb, contrasting with its role of a religious center
and civic urban program.
12
As a result the public space outside these capsules is a space that is
absolutely marginal and it is accidental, disperse, unsettling sometimes and
is most often used - almost exclusively - as a "channel" for vehicular trafc,
granting to cars their leading role in the city.
Within this framework Architecture is in the service of a model of urban
development that anticipates a city that is punctured by landmarks, as
design objects that deny their full architectural dimension in that they nd

Fig. 6 Allies and Morrison - London

Stratford, Masterplan for the Olympic
Games 2012

Fig. 7 Allies and Morrison - London

Kings Cross Central Masterplan 2007
Fig. 7
Fig. 6
CONTEMPORARY ROME The quality of urban space in the contemporary city
GIOVANNA PIGA! 6
their meaning and their quality only in formal properties and in sculptural
modeling, and less in the essential qualities of spatial and social relations
that they should establish with the context.
13

The reading of the context, textures, patterns and connections to which
the good architects were denitely referring and the best architects used as
guidelines and matrices for generating their projects, today are ignored and
the context is mainly used to make numerical charts and feasibility studies
that match political expectations.
CONCLUSION
The key question is then how to shift from a single project to an urban
network, made of varied textures, patterns and vital connections, both
material and immaterial relationships that can promote an urban regeneration
process, an economic development and a tangible social and environmental
improvement.
Contemporary Rome is nearly possible then. In order for urban
redevelopment plans to eliminate the "nearly" it is necessary to consider a
network of connective spaces capable of enhancing the relationships,
routes, sequences and public places that are critical to create a functioning
system of collective public spaces.
It would also be necessary to intervene at a larger scale in the
organization of the metropolitan area, by affecting on the spatial distribution
of primary functions, major infrastructure, connections, and using the multi-
polar city as a model.
"It is essential - suggests again Alfredo Mela - that the organization of
connections between the different poles would not be channeled into
viaducts that would rule out private residential spaces, on the contrary it is
necessary that the new centers would not be isolated but open to the urban
space they belong to (...), projecting out in axes capable of innervating the
surrounding area.
14
The means of interconnection should promote a system of public
transportation at the large-scale that is competitive to private transportation
and support pedestrian and cycling use through the provision of a sequence
of open and walkable public spaces.
There is a need for a new idea of the contemporary city that would allow
unknown opportunities to be revealed. This is the only way for the new
architectural episodes to become the true protagonists: easy to be
approached, easily accessible and usable and promoters of a different
philosophy about the public use of the city.

Fig. 8 Richard Meier - Rome Tor Tre

Teste Jubilee Church 2003

Fig. 9 Zaha Hadid - Rome Flaminio

MAXXI 2010
Fig. 9
Fig. 8
CONTEMPORARY ROME The quality of urban space in the contemporary city
GIOVANNA PIGA! 7
NOTES
1
Koolhaas R., Junkspace, ed. Quodlibet, 2006
2
Associazione culturale IF, http://ifresearch.blogspot.com/2010/04/la-citta-
contemporanea-ideale.html
3
Marcelloni M., Pensare la citt contemporanea, Il nuovo piano regolatore di Roma,
Editori Laterza, Roma 2003
4
Thermes L., Roma interrotta: dodici interventi sulla pianta del Nolli, in Controspazio
(4/1978); 1981 AD magazine published Roma interrotta a critical remake of the Nolli
Plan by contemporary architects
5
AA.VV., Uneternal City - Urbanism beyond Rome - 11. Mostra Internazionale di
Architettura, Marsilio, 2008
6
Comune di Roma, http://www.urbanistica.comune.roma.it/nuovi-modelli-di-
trasformazione-urbana.html
7
M. Marcelloni, Introduzione, in Questioni della citt contemporanea a cura di M.
Marcelloni, ed Franco Angeli, Milano 2005
8
Comune di Roma, http://www.urbanistica.comune.roma.it/progetto-millennium.html
9
N. Portas, Una strategia per la citt ampia, la citt esplosa e la citt estensiva in
Questioni della citt contemporanea a cura di M. Marcelloni, ed Franco Angeli,
Milano 2005
10
A. Mela, La citt contemporanea e i cittadini fruitori, in Questioni della citt
contemporanea a cura di M. Marcelloni, ed Franco Angeli, Milano 2005
11
R. Nicolini, Roma, una citt in stato confusionale, in www.eddyburg.it, 10.04.2010
12
G. Strappa, La citt dei recinti, in Corriere della Sera del 19.01.2004
13
D. Derossi, Una riessione sul rapporto tra citt e architettura, in Gidac 2 -
Documenti - www.gizmoweb.org, Torino 2009
14
A. Mela, La citt contemporanea e i cittadini fruitori, in Questioni della citt
contemporanea a cura di M. Marcelloni, ed Franco Angeli, Milano 2005
CONTEMPORARY ROME The quality of urban space in the contemporary city
GIOVANNA PIGA! 8
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND WEB RESOURCES
- AA.VV., Questioni della citt contemporanea, a cura di M. Marcelloni, ed Franco
Angeli, Milano 2005;
- AA.VV., Uneternal City - Urbanism beyond Rome - Sezione della 11. Mostra
Internazionale di Architettura, Marsilio, 2008;
- Associazione Culturale IF, http://ifresearch.blogspot.com/2010/04/la-citta-
contemporanea-ideale.html;
- Betsky A., Interrogazioni sullarchitettura: meditazioni sullo spettacolo l fuori, in 11.
Mostra Internazionale di Architettura, Out there: Architecture Beyond Building,
Installazioni, Volume I, Venezia 2008 pp. 14-21;
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Levi, Monza 2010;
- Brandolini S., Roma Architettura Nuova, Skira, Roma 2008;
- Camiz A., The Nolli plan as a palimpsest for creative urban design, in Giambattista
Nolli, Imago Urbis, and Rome, Studium Urbis, Roma 2003;
- Ceen A., Roma ripercorsa. Redening lost urban connections, Studium Urbis, Rome
2005;
- Ceen A., Rome 1748 - The Pianta Grande di Roma of Gian Battista Nolli in
Facsimile, Highmount 1991;
- Censi M.R., Frontero D., Germani A., Roma '06. Roma, Architettura Contemporanea,
ed. Kappa, Roma 2006;
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- Dal Co F., Roma interrotta, Oppositions. A Journal for Ideas and Criticism in
Architecture, Published for The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, MIT
press, n. 12, Spring 1978, pp. 109-118;
- Marcelloni M., Pensare la citt contemporanea, Il nuovo piano regolatore di Roma,
Editori Laterza, Roma 2003;
- Sartogo P., Roma interrotta, in 11. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura. Out there:
Architecture beyond building, Installazioni, vol. 1, Venezia 2008, p. 155;
- Secchi B., La citt del ventesimo secolo, Laterza, Roma 2005;
- Vicari Haddock S., La citt contemporanea, ed. Il Mulino, Bologna 2004.
IMAGES
- http://www.panoramio.com/photo/40909332
- http://maps.google.it
- http://www.bing.com/maps
- Zaha Hadid Architects London
- Insula Architettura e Ingegneria S.r.l. Roma
- Allies & Morrison Architects London
- Comune di Roma Sito Istituzionale
- http://www.ickr.com/photos/doc-cesena/4319705570/
- http://www.presstletter.com/articolo.asp?articolo=2490
CONTEMPORARY ROME The quality of urban space in the contemporary city
GIOVANNA PIGA! 9
Giovanna Piga is a practicing licensed architect. She received her Postgraduate
degree in Architectural Design from University of Rome (La Sapienza) and in
Sustainable Architecture from A.N.A.B. National Association of Sustainable
Architecture after completing her ve-year B.S. in Architecture at University of Rome
(La Sapienza).
Since 1999 she is professor in Architectural Design at the Philadelphia University
study abroad program in Rome. She teaches and gives lectures, seminars and
workshops at a variety of universities, including Loyola University, St. Johns
University, University of Arkansas and University La Sapienza.
Her research and teaching on contemporary architecture theory, architecture and
urban design, history of architecture are published as book chapters, journal articles
and conference proceedings. The most relevant achievements are in her studies on
Sustainable Marina Design and Waterfront Development; High Quality Urban Space
in the Contemporary City; Peripheries and Urban Landscapes in Motion; Ethics and
Urban Invention.
In addition to presenting at domestic and international conferences and symposia,
participating in workshops and exhibitions, she has been working as an independent
architect since 2002 and as project architect at several Rome architectural rms
since 1991, designing and coordinating a variety of building types. Her work ranges
from architecture, planning, interior and exhibition design, through the rehabilitation
of public buildings and urban revitalisation within historical contexts, as well as the
historic preservation and redevelopment of the marina and waterfront. As part of her
work, she enters numerous competitions, both Italian and international and has been
awarded First Prizes and Finalists. Her projects are published in national and
international architectural magazines. The most relevant are: First prize winner:
International Competition Europan 5 New residential landscapes, Savona Italy;
National Ideas Competition for the transformation of 19 public spaces, Rome Italy;
European Ideas Competition Europan 4, Constructing the town upon the town:
transformation of contemporary urban sites, Bratislava Slovak Republic. Finalist:
International Competition Research Tower in the industrial area, Padua Italy, with
Baumschlager-Eberle architects; National Ideas Competition for the Transformation
of the convent complex of Santa Maria Maddalena, San Giovanni Rotondo Italy;
International Ideas Competition for the Transformation of the area of San Lorenzo,
Rome Italy; National Ideas Competition for the Transformation of the waterfront,
Palau Italy; National Ideas Competition for the Restructuring of the historical centre,
Pontassieve (Florence) Italy; National Ideas Competition for the Restructuring of the
area A.M.C.M., Modena Italy.