Riconoscimento e costruzione di un luogo: il caso di piazza Testaccio a Roma. Place recognition and construction: the example of Piazza Testaccio in Rome

The case-study of Piazza Testaccio in Rome shows that public space, in order to be attractive, must necessarily be designed as a continuous plan open to the context. It also indicates that participatory processes are successful when they are the result of a concrete synergy between citizens, authorities and planners, and much less so when they respond to models and procedures imposed from above. The text traces the participatory design conception phase with the inhabitants, the formal, functional and technical-constructive choices, the implementation and the use of this new urban space in which people interact and meet, even casually, turning it into a “place” precisely through the individual and collective recognition of a community.