An urban taboo

Defined through monumental perspectives, dimensionally related to historical roman avenues, and philologically connected to the Mausoleum of Alexander Severus, the Don Bosco district in Rome has both the characters of a lithic wing and the obsessive seriality of its housing blocks. It was mostly planned by Gaetano Rapisardi in the early fifties, by further development of the “Plan of Rome” made in 1931, and represents the only discontinuity in the Italian panorama of low-cost housing districts, More related to the foreign contexts than its coeval experiences. While almost completely ignored by Italian architectural debate,the Don Bosco district denotes a refined spatial stronghold thanks to: the monumental dimension of the courtyards and the scenic continuity of Viale Don Bosco (one of the largest axis in Italy); all those elements define a highly discernible morphological area, enclosed by two poles: the Mausoleum and Cinecittà. A perceived figurative relation with the fascist model of urban planning-which is one of the reasons that this district has mostly been considered as a taboo in the Italian architectural debate- is a a source of avoiding to solve this problem in a rational way.(The urban problematics posed by a, highly populated peripheral area.) District of Don Bosco offers an original opportunity to investigate the only operational methodology of those days that acted in counter trend to its coeval experiences. The district nowadays still keeps a unifying and recognisable design keeping a dialogue with the existing city, while the modernist districts near to it , built in the sixties, share the difficulties of a rude interruption in the surrounding urban fabric.