Undrground and City

The project upgrades the outlying Area Don Bosco, aiming at the connection between its disjoined layers: area, infrastructure, ground and underground. The project connects the submarged and the emerged, improving the underground station designing a fluid and dynamic infrastructure system and the sustainability of the area.

Project-wise we are limited by the surrounding city and an architecture which emerges without much regard for the underlying strata or the difficulties and hidden resources under our feet.With my thesis I wish to search for new solutions which take into account this zone as a resource. In particular my interest lies in the infrastructural system of Rome’s underground station, more specifically to the G. Agricola underground station on the A-line. The plan of the outlying area Don Bosco has been redesigned, starting from the underground station as the barycenter and heart of the social life and infrastructural mobility.The station will not only be linked up to the center but also to the intersection of the two principal thoroughfares of G.Agricola and the chaotic Tuscolana.The project links the entire area to the center of Rome in one direction and in the other to the Appia Park, Centocelle Park and Villa Ada Park in a single great park system. The project aims at making the crossroads a focal point through the development of a greater uniformity between the two axes.The station will become more accessible through a series of new openings thereby linking it up to the area and so producing a dynamism.The underlying territory is a resource which is too often considered separate from the city above ground level. In this project there will be a continuity between both levels.The entrances will be reached by two routes,one along the axis G.Agricola, with a line of plane trees, totally lacking along the other Tuscolana axis. The latter will be enhanced by a light steel structure over a long concrete base and a supporting grid with climbing plants, creating a great green tunnel witch brings to a beneficial microclimate and colors and natural rhithms. This will create a route for pedestrians and cyclists along the Tuscolana serving as meeting point for people to relax and move freely around before leading up to the underground platform, aiming to a dynamicity that breaks with the traditional and old infrastructural system of Rome’s undrground station.