The role of urban analysis in the requalification of schools in historical centers, the case of Via Giulia

The research involves the Piazza Della Moretta zone, specifically the Virgilio High school adjacent to the Via Giulia street in the historical center of Rome as a subject of urban regeneration. The interest in this area arises for the existence of the void, amidst a continuity of consolidated urban fabric, that remains an evidence of the rejection towards the demolitions of the 1940s. The general scope is to identify a certain grammar of the urban form, that will further explain how the formative principles have determined the city as we know it, and that describes the value of the relations between the historical and contemporary spaces. The approach that combines tools of morphological analysis with readings of the historical archives, is meant to clarify the way the heritage is reflected in the project of the city. The designated fabric is rooted to the expansion axes of the Claudio-Nerone era that are projected from Campo Marzio. Subsequently, Via Giulia became the manifestation of many modifications and witnessed the complex constitutive process of the city. Departing from a base of critical reading of the process, the aim is to re-stitch the fabric recomposing the forms and the significance of the places. Thus, the design strategies of the Virgilio school will be defined following the new national guidelines for educational systems. Therefore, its imperative to rethink spaces that would offer flexible, multifunctional, and modular solutions; that will in turn satisfy both educational and urban needs hence becoming the civic center that would give way to a local cultural development.