“NEW ARCHITECTURE IN ANCIENT CITY. THE TYPOLOGICAL-PROCEDURAL APPROACH OF CANIGGIA, BOLLATI AND VAGNETTI GROUPS IN THE COMPETITION FOR THE EXTENSION OF CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES”

In 1967 the Chamber of Deputies advertises a national competition for a preliminary plan for the extension of the italian Parliament. It symbolized one of the most important and complex contests among those advertised in the postwar period and represented a great opportunity for the most important personalities of Italian architectural culture; it was, also, an important venue for comparing the different approaches of various competitors to design thinking in the historic center. The Chamber of Deputies, dropped the plan to transfer the functions incompatible with the environmental nature of the historical center in more suitable areas and decided to stay within the stratified urban fabric of Rione Campo Marzio for its prestige and historical significance. The announcement proposed as a design area an empty space in the heart of the stratified and consolidated urban context in the roman historical fabric, left by the demolitions of the medieval and baroque fabric carried out, since 1908, for the construction of the new parliamentary building by Ernesto Basile. Fifty years later, for a design of national importance, which is the extension of the Chamber of Deputies, no new demolitions of the historic fabric were carried out, but an undefined area, in the heart of the city, became a place of historically congruent transformations. The outcome of the competition, which ended with 18 ex-aequo, provides the evidence about the great uncertainty that becomes apparent every time we have to deal with ancient urban fabric.