The urban forms of contemporary Rome

Rome is the one of the most scenographic cities in Europe and one with the highest number of historical stratifications. To understand contemporary Rome in its outward sprawl, however, means to understand an uncontrolled relationship between order and chaos. Since the postwar period the loss of compactness in urban planning has been occurring with chronological progression resulting in the break-up of its own structuring principle in the city area, which should be understood more as a surrender to rampant overbuilding rather than a search for new models. In the latest years the badly planned city outskirts with their equal-height residential buildings showing no identifiable connection with the "territory" at all represent a considerable change of the urban settlement principle characteristic of the Italian landscape where the idea of beauty was given by the contrast between a building and its natural surroundings resulting in a mutual, organic celebration of both. After the Rome of Pope Sixtus V, the complexity of the Baroque style, the 19the century geometrical precision of the urban fabric, the "suprematist" experiment of E42, the myth of the Mediterranean and of Neorealism, what will we have to do in order to build a new idea of a city anchored to the aspirations of a globally changed society? My conference paper proposal stems from this question as it intends to critically analyze the current meaning of the relationship between the urban and architectural aggregations of Roman monumental features and the urban sprawl as well as modern and contemporary interventions on the international stage which are compatibile with the stratification principle and with the theme of "scale jumping" which Rome shows in its consolidated image.