The Capitol Two: the Citizen's Home, Rome

The general aim of the competition project for the new headquarters of the capitol is the realization of an integrated administrative hub able to contain the demand for infrastructure services determined by the spread of offices and services all over the city in facilities that are unsuitable in terms of accessibility, flexibility, and environmental comfort conditions. Indeed, the dispersion of the offices of the Rome’s city hall, which nowadays lie partly in the historic city center, incurs considerable environmental costs, especially in terms of the urban ecosystem rather than the individual impact caused by the isolated system of buildings or connected infrastructure. The decision to gather the administrative functions of the city hall together in a single compartment is thus in itself a factor in overall improvement in terms of environmental burden, quality of the resources, and the manageability and environmental sustainability of the city. The project highlights the public nature of the new structure of Capitol Two, a relocation and coordination of the services essential to the city of Rome. An essential role has been assigned to the coincidence between architecture and urban design, which represents at the same time a divergence from any position that reduces it to an aesthetic or technical object in the style of big company offices (but not falling short of the commitment to efficiency and flexibility of use) and an affirmation of the public nature of the project and of the fact that it is an open system, like a design that attributes meaning to the space between the built objects and its habitability.