INSTAURATIO URBIS III

Instauratio Urbis III draws out an imaginary of Rome that is focused on the peripheral modernist housing estates of the Fascist era: the borgate. Promoted as sanitary improvements, the borgate were simultaneously an instrument in Mussolini’s legitimising myth of Romanità, complicit in the demolition of centrally-located housing districts and the displacement of the  so-called “parasitic” social classes that inhabited them. 

 

Over the years, the borgate became symbols of Fascist doctrine as well as of political resistance and cultural resilience, celebrated in Pasolini’s neorealist films and poetry. Their critical potential has historically been, nonetheless, overshadowed by the spectacular, petrified image of the Eternal City. 

 

Instauratio Urbis III is a response to two previous historic attempts at re-imagining Rome. The first exemplified by Piranesi’s Campo Marzio, and the second by Mussolini’s violent gesture. Positing an urban vision in which inhabitants of the peripheries are invited to return to the city, along with re-designed and re-oriented architectural fragments of the borgate, this project probes the possibility of reconciling Rome’s celebrated and overlooked architectures. Unravelled between the ancient ruins and over the iconic landscape, this imaginary urbanism consists of seven architectural propositions, each corresponding to a different borgata, a dedicated urban function and one of Rome’s hills.