Issues on type and construction in the "rioni" of Rome built after the unification of Italy. the "casa d'affitto".

The essay proposes a multi-criteria examination of Rome's late 19th century tenement house. After city's annexation to the Italian Kingdom, immediately it began the construction of new "rioni" (the traditional Rome districts). This involved the densification of peripheral parts of the historical city hat mostly were characterized by religious buildings, vine yards, villas and gardens. For example the Rione Esquilino, the few existing residential buildings were aligned to roads established in the late 16th century by the pope Sixtus V. These roads were the basic framework for the expansion project. Thus, in all the rioni, the influence of building type to urban pattern was secondary, as the relative position between preserve structures strongly influenced the various dimensions of blocks. Contrariwise, major influence on the urban form on a lower scale must be attributed to the configuration of a new building type, which again is determined by constructive techniques as well as the limits imposed to speculation by the building code. The paper presents the results of a research on the tenement house, that under a constructive point of view is based on three parallel masonry walls, main facade, asymmetrically positioned spine wall (for the fundamental introduction of the corridor in the apartments plan), and back facade. They were stiffened by other few perpendicular walls. A description of constructive components is offered in relation to the social, political, economic and technological context. Seeking the "lowest common denominator" of the building organism, the research was able to fill some gaps of links between construction, architectural design project and city in the 19th century Rome