Fragments of Rome: flânerie as a pedagogical method for reading urban layers

This paper discusses ‘Fragments of Rome. Exploring Urban Layers of Traces, Colour, Materials, and People’ an intensive international workshop held at the Faculty of Architecture of Sapienza University of Rome from 18 to 20 February 2025, within the framework of the Architecture Pop-up Lab Exchange (APLE) EU project. The workshop brought together architecture students and tutors from four Western Balkan universities and Italy, focusing on an urban corridor in Rome between Campo de’ Fiori and Teatro Marcello. This area was conceived as an experimental pedagogical framework for reading and interpreting the historic city through the methodology of flânerie, while fostering an international and intercultural learning environment. Through prior student preparation and attentive walking, multisensory observation, and thematic fragmentation—traces, colour, materials, and people—conducted on site, the workshop positioned embodied experience as a form of analytical knowledge fundamental to the pre-design phase. The paper argues that flânerie, when structured and critically framed, can operate as a rigorous methodological tool in architectural education, even when applied within a limited time frame, by revealing latent urban layers and fostering interpretative and critical skills. Finally, the contribution situates the workshop within contemporary debates on experiential learning outside the classroom and multisensory design, proposing this methodology as a productive bridge between perception, analysis, and architectural and urban design.