WHEN DE GASPERI MET THE CIRCLES
Ideas Competition for the Urban Regeneration of Piazza Alcide De Gasperi
Program Public square, natural zones, playground, 3 food kiosks, 1 restaurant, two-level underground parking
Team Valerio Franzone, 3C+T Capolei Cavalli A.A.
Client Municipality of Grottaferrata
Location Grottaferrata (Rome), Italy
Area public square13.000 m2; two-level underground parking 10.285 m2
Year 2010
When De Gasperi Met the Circles is an organic and coherent singularity matching architecture, nature, and humanity.
The functions in the new piazza are now considered activity zones or, more precisely, relational attractors; they are meeting points capable of generating relational processes.
By acting on the thin border between space and relational processes, the project turns the design process into something broader than what it is usually considered, becoming a programmatic and processual action. Such an understanding means considering the physical space as something capable of stimulating and enriching the relational and social dynamics happening in it.
The architectural project starts as a spatial definition and as a hypothesis of a not-yet-articulated future use. It continues as a process through the continuous and becoming daily relations between architecture and humanity, between fixed physical structures and ever-changing human dynamics.
Piazza Alcide de Gasperi aims to be a place where people can be free. It is an homage to the politicians and statesmen who wrote the Italian Constitution and to the hard work they did to create the Repubblica Italiana and to make it grow thanks to what was a new concept of public matter.
