Trailer Through the project

Not eligible for AIA CES Credits

Radical. The memories and practice of a visionary architecture and its conception in the Roman context, between imagination and movement. References to the economic boom of the 1960s, the youth movements and the pursuit of a new costume, "new spaces" for a "new time". An architecture of the moment, which was able to anticipate, interpret and innovate through the "train of history".

Brutal. The signs of an architecture made of concrete, the Roman interpretation of the brutalist experience in Europe, a new way of conceiving residential and work spaces, between research and material experimentation. An architecture that is inspired by the great references of the 20th century, between innovation and change.

This is the beginning of the story of the Roman firm 3C+t, Capolei Cavalli Architetti Associati, through the voice of architect Giancarlo Capolei, founding partner, professor of Urban Planning at La Sapienza in Rome until 2005, then moving on to the firm’s journey, a transition between two generations that allowed to pass the baton from the ‘90s to today.

Then, the voices of the architects Fabrizio and Pierfrancesco Capolei guide the ArchiTALKS in the "turn of the century", narrating the change in architecture and contemporary society, new requirements, needs and the new design approach towards the future. Between versatility and sartorial care, the vision of the firm fits cleverly into different contexts, from its Roman center of gravity to the conscious insertion within the international scene.

The large-scale project deals with the traditional themes of the firm’s practice. Along with the design of residential, commercial or retail spaces, a series of interventions begin to stratify, driving 3C+t in the exploration of the design of water.

Ports, marinas and waterfronts are some examples of this new world, where attention to the design process moves from micro to macro while maintaining the same type of approach, between versatility and sartorial attention.

An architecture focused on the place, capable of interpreting and altering it while respecting its intrinsic nature, where the power of the sea and water become the driving force of the project, like in the case of the thermal baths in Tivoli, where the presence of water becomes an element to model architecture according to the principle of well-being and care.

An architecture attentive to memory and aimed at the regeneration and recovery of a thousand-year-old city: Rome and its history, Rome and its changes. A consolidated city that presents itself, along the layers of its territory, as a place of memories and new narrations, between policies and strategies, visions and implementations at different scales.

Examples of this are the numerous social housing projects outside the consolidated city, spaces for the transformation of the city and way of living. Again, an example is the residential project of Stamperie 152, the former headquarters of the Messaggero newspaper in the Monti district - an area of Roman insulae within the Aurelian walls - turned into spaces for living, in a complex and articulated tension between ancient and new: the facade maintained on via Urbana and an internal courtyard overlooked by apartments of different sizes.

Thus the themes of urban restoration and regeneration, of small and large scales, are addressed, where pieces of the city are reread and rewritten through a language that interprets new uses and new functions of a territory undergoing transformation, between memory and the future.

Educational Objectives

• Understand the transitions between different fundamental periods of the history of architecture, art and design in the Roman context - between the radical movement, brutalism and contemporaneity - discovering their issues and objectives;
• Analyze the issues of urban regeneration and recovery, the transformation of different parts of the city of Rome, between suburbs and consolidated city, through different case studies, from commercial to office buildings, from private residential buildings to social housing;
  
• Identify the large-scale design approach for the design and construction of large ports, marinas and waterfronts. Needs, difficulties and goals. Tools for planning and design, the principles of the place and attention to the territory;
  
• Understand the dialogue between designer, construction companies and clients, as well as local administration and Superintendency, in the pursuit of design and procedural compromises, to create works capable of being coherently inserted in the urban and territorial context.