Università Roma Tre

The course includes a series of lessons centered on the topic of collective housing, with particular reference to the experimentations proposed by architectural culture in Rome and Madrid from the beginning of the 20th century to more recent years. The lessons will tend to highlight the forms assumed by collective housing over the different periods and in the research of the protagonists of the architectural scene who have worked in these two cities, with a specific attention to the topic of urban form and the relation between dwelling and city.
The case of Rome assumes an emblematic value in this context. In fact Rome was a particularly fertile field of experimentation during the 20th century, in which the collective housing took on extreme and original forms ranging from the emphasis on domestic and individual scale in the Ina Casa neighborhoods, to monumental scale of the great projects of the Seventies in which the collective dimension prevails. But during the 20th century Rome was also a field of spontaneous practices of "colonization" of urban spaces, through which domestic elements infiltrated the ancient monuments of its huge territory. The ambiguity of the relations between domesticity and the material persistence of monuments, which the city itself has promoted in the course of its history, can be considered one of the specific characters of Roman dwelling, a consequence of practices that can be analyzed and codified as a source of inspiration for contemporary projects.
The long phase of experimentation on collective housing in Rome ended in the Eighties. Although the city continued to grow through the construction of residential units, there were no significant architectural researches (except for sporadic cases).
On the contrary, Madrid has been interested in the last decades by a ohase of rich experimentation on the topic of the collective housing, which has involved the local and international architectural culture in the design of whole urban areas. The practices promoted by the Empresa Municipal de la Vivienda y el Suelo (EMVS) through open competitions and invitations to international architects consolidated the role of the city as a laboratory of experimentation and reflection on the new forms of collective housing. The most well-known, and even the most controversial, outcomes, such as the Mirador building in Sanchinarro or the projects by Tom Mayne (Morphosis), David Chipperfiled, Wiel Arets or Ricardo Legorreta, appeared as elements of comparison and renewal for a research in which important local architects such as Amann, Cánovas and Maruri, Soto and Maroto, Espegel and Fisac, Burgos and Garrido, Blanca Lleó, Ábalos and Herreros, or Frechilla and Peláez, participated with significant contributions.
The Departamento de Proyectos Arquitectónicos of Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid – ETSAM, also stood out for its research on this topic, in particular through the activities of the GIVCO Research Groups (Grupo de Investigación en Vivienda Colectiva) with Carmen Espegel as principal researcher and with the relevant participation of professors such as Andrés Cánovas and José María de Lapuerta, and NuTAC (Nuevas Técnicas Arquitectura Ciudad), with José María Ezquiaga as principal researcher and contributions of works directed by Sergio Martín Blas. The parallel relation between research and practice built by these and other professors in the field of contemporary collective housing makes it possible to identify Madrid, and the Departamento de Proyectos of ETSAM, as a partner of extraordinary interest in promoting student training in the housing project.

M. Farina (a cura di), Studi sulla casa urbana. Sperimentazioni e temi di progetto, Gangemi, Roma 2009
A. Cánovas, C. Epegel, J. M. De Lapuerta, C. Martínez Arroyo, R. Penjeam, Vivienda Colectiva en España. 1992- 2015. TC cuadernos, Valencia, 2017
S. Martín Blas et al. (Editores). Holanda en Madrid: social housing and urban regeneration. Mairea libros, Madrid, 2014