Board Room , Department of Architecture, Scroope Terrace, Cambridge
17:00 - 18:30

International Workshop:
PhD Candidates Workshop Sapienza (DRACO) - Cambridge

Lecture:
Dr. Anna Irene Del Monaco, Department of Architecture, DRACO, La Sapienza University of Rome
Corviale, "an uncertain dam sub tegmine fagi" roted in the Rome periphery

Corviale, a one thousand meters public housing unit built in Rome from 1972 to 1984, is universally known as the biggest
scandal, the biggest problem, the biggest myth of modern urban architecture. It seems the extreme fruit of a season that
lasted from the middle of the sixties and encompassed the seventies – characterized by a great push for the design of that,
which was supposed to be the new democratic Italian city; a richer, more politically driven and more modern one with no
less solidarity than the neorealist city right after the war lled with labor, poverty and poetry. The Corviale housing unit
has become for sense of estrangement and exile from the city that its rst inhabitants had – the great sickness in outskirts
of Rome, the deathbed to which we all rushed and continue to rush; everyone including administrators, urban designers,
architects and journalists. All this is more due to its exceptional proportions than its size, due to the complications of its
monumental system of vertical paths, the useless extension of its galleries and condominium access paths and the desolation
of the – unmanageable – service areas. In 1981 on the n.617 of "Domus" Review Manfredo Tafuri wrote an article entitle
"A uncertain dam sub tegmine fagi.....". He mantained that "Corviale, devoid of referents in the current urban structure,
adopts the signs of "poverty", and in spite of everything is hooked to the site. An "uncertain dam" rooted in a suburb that
even the brush of Sironi cannot redeem anymore: in a place where 'inhabiting' is impossible, a monumental aphorism
goes down, which speaks of a tragic conict between unity and dierences."