knotting the voids: a methodological tool to infill the historical city

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the results of an academic research that investigates the relationship between contemporary architecture and the historical context of Rome, in which the scale of single intervention has been related to the fabric and, through an additional level of analysis, linked to the urban dimension. The "construction" of the new place determines complex social dynamics, considering also the role that the human perception of the new project may have on a so complex and layered architectural reality as the one of Rome’s center. The buildings cannot be considered independently, but they contribute to the formation of a larger scale units that affect their characters. The concepts that we have expressed for building types are in some ways extensible to the urban fabric: for fabric is intended the sum of the characters, procesually determined, which characterize the formation of a building aggregate. The method employed considers the historical urban environment as the readable sign of a process of territorial anthropization, and it starts by identifying those characters, within the fabric, that are essential to preserve the cultural heritage; then it analyzes a number of transformations compatible with the morphogenetic process of historical buildings. This first part is meant in order to hypothesize a reconstruction of tissues as they may have been if not interrupted by an external factor during their history (state of neglect, natural disaster, political choices, uncompleted plans). In other words, the notion of fabric is related to the aggregate in the same way as the notion of type is related to the building. A building fabric is thus characterized by a recognizable law, iterative and identifiable. From this point of view we can talk about building structures that are composed to form organisms having a higher scale. An objective difficulty that this work poses is due to the fact that the historical fabric is often the result of many different historical phases. The aim of the methodology shown in this research is not only to “knot” a very large area to the rest of the urban tissue but also to fill an urban void in order to change it into a place related to the city. This morphological approach is developed within a university course in which students, following this design methodology, can define an intervention integrally responsive to the urban and social needs of Rome. The two areas identified as cases studies are Piazza Montecitorio, next to the Italian Chamber of Deputies, and Regina Coeli prison, one of the first modern jails of Rome that stands on via della Lungara. These areas are better known as “Buchi di Roma” (Roman Voids) and they represent an unresolved urban episode in the contemporary architectural history of the Italian capital. The project proposals take note of the demolitions produced between World War I and World Wall II trying to define a new, organic relationship between parts of the city now separated. A certain number of students developed the theme, as their thesis degree, realizing a shared masterplan in order to define the general characters of the new intervention, like a process of change of the existing urban forms.