Roma: a portrait of lost identity

Can a crystallized city such as Rome, paralyzed by its memory, have its own architectural evolution? Does the insertion of new architectural references in the urban space today consolidate a city or destroy its original shape? Is contemporary man today able to recover the identity of his places through his past? At what price?

Back in 1527, Rome was imagined as a fence that contained its own architectural and morphological references. But today, we can assume that the growth of the city through new self-referential references, could lead the city to overload itself and consequently to implode both visually and spatially. Hence, the need for architecture as an open work, changeable over time that allows the city to evolve with it; the need of a common language, a lowest common denominator, within the unbridled pluralism of the contemporary age. Indeed, Heidegger stated that it is no longer the city that creates its own image, but it is the image that creates the city. So, in a dystopian vision of reality, the only way to make the places and buildings of the city their own and recover their identity will be to museumize them. Then it will be possible to see the museum of Piazza Navona, the Pantheon museum and finally the museum of life because, by depriving the squares and the monuments of their life, it comes the need to show life itself as a manifestation. Being a museum the reflected image of society, life will therefore become an exhibition work. In conclusion, the thesis aims to arise a sensation and a reaction, rework the forms, the environments, the architecture of the main elements that constitute the spatial and visual references of the Roman city. It proposes, as a provocation, the new enclosure "Museum of Life", where the buildings, positioned as object trouvé, represent what remains of a city, that is, its references. Thanks to which we could be able to regain our identity as belonging to a place. The area of intervention, currently the headquarters of the Italgas Roma company, is delimited: on the right by Viale Ostiense, on the left by the Tiber river, below by the former Centrale Montemartini and above by the residential area of the city. Thus, the project consists of four main buildings, connected to each other by means of elevated walkways and paved paths on the ground. The four buildings represent: artist residences and exhibition towers, a theater, a library and a residential building for young couples and university students.