The untouchables

After the failure of the last major architectural projects set in Rome, the citizens perceive to live now in a dead City. A city in which the bureaucracy has curbed any possibility of creative and experimental development. A city in which the standardization of the few new buildings (mainly residential) in favor of an economic containment, led to a decreased architectural quality. This slow process of decline, has been occurred among all the Capitoline administrations of the last decades and led to the failure of the great projects that would have to change the City forever.

Starting from the so-called “Cities” projects (City of Sports of Calatrava, the City of Youth of Koolhaas, the City of Science in via Guido Reni and the Water City of EUR) passing through the new Capitol and arriving at the new Stadium of the Rome, in the last twenty years Rome has seen its opportunity of evolution crumble, delegating to Milan every possibility of study and architectural experimentation. Here, in fact, architecture and design had became the key points for the development, taking it, soon, like the great European capitals. The process of development and renewal is inherent in the natural urban morphological and spatial evolution, representing the complexity of its society and its need for progress. For this reason, Rome has the need to return to being proactive with new critical and architectural reflections, which are able to evolve not only the city but also its citizens.

“GLI INTOCCABILI – THE UNTOUCHABLES” is an analysis and criticism of a Rome completely blocked under the mothballs. A City where any form of experimentation or architectural proposal is rejected. Where projects like those of Libera, Nervi, Moretti, Luccichenti and other great architects of the ‘900 are unimaginable. “A city interrupted because it has ceased to be imagined” expertly described Giulio Carlo Argan on the occasion of the famous “Roma Interrotta” exhibition held in 1978. This is why twelve international studies under 35 have been invited to imagine how some of the most sensitive places in the eternal city (untouchable precisely) can change in the near future, suggesting through images a newfound relationship between the historical stratification of the city and the inevitability and necessity of progress. Each of the twelve young architects will receive a symbolic place, on which they will be asked to propose a possible new scenarioThe twelve works will be accompanied by a brief description of the author. A dialogue through images, therefore, in antithesis to the perpetual stalemate of contemporary architectural production in Rome, aimed at bringing attention to the panorama of the Capital, and stimulating a critical reflection between the possibilities of contemporary architecture and the importance of historical heritage. For this reason, each image will be exhibited in the indicated place, part of a public open-air museum path that leads all citizens to reflect on the topic. Furthermore, all the works produced and the reactions of citizens to these works will be collected in a single exhibition.