Osservatorio urbano tra disegno, colore e fotografia. Piazza Perin del Vaga al Flaminio, Roma

As part of a wide investigation into the qualities of significant urban spaces in Rome’s historic built environment, the contribution summarizes the results of a study aimed at exploring and documenting some of the distinctive aspects of an ‘authorial’ urban space. The investigation has been founded on a preliminary survey project, following a dialectical criterion between Drawing and Photography as expressive languages indispensable for the representation of Colour and Light of the built architecture. The ‘Flaminio II’ district, located in the first urban north bend of the Tiber, was conceived by ‘integral architects’ as a social housing complex; in the centenary of its construction, it maintains intact the symphonic organization of spatial sequences in favor of a living-collective of users in transit or settled. Its study involves a dual connotation: on the one hand, it is representative of the design thinking of the Roman School of Architectural Design of the 1920s; on the other, it reveals how the perennial qualities of a shared space can amplify and virtuously improve living. The analysis was carried out with an expeditive and integrated methodological approach of knowledge, through careful observation based on original archive documents, with the aim of understanding the essence of the place, dense with tangible values but also intangible values that refer to its historical, social and community cultural identities.