Given and Taken Space. Architectural and Urban Form as the Foundation of Informal Spatial Transformations: the Case Study of Quarticciolo, Rome

Public housing neighborhoods can be considered as ‘given’ spaces, conceived from above and regulated in their form but also provided for people in economic need, whose narrative – stereotyped and stigmatizing – is often aprioristic. From this kind of feature emerges and opposes a ‘taken’ space: taken by the communities that live there, which through informal practices of self-appropriation transform the urban and architec- tural space in its use and meaning. Informal processes of spatial transformation often raise issues that are deeply rooted in community needs and contemporary urgencies, especially in fragile and marginal urban contexts. These practices can give rise to a number of fundamental design themes which, going beyond conventions and predefined models, can trigger dynamics of community empowerment towards antifragile conditions: unpredictability in the co-production and appropriation of space, profound reinterpretation of places, self-determination of people, transfrormative participation, architectural and urban co-design. This paper aims to investigate the role of architectural and urban form in encouraging (or not) these kinds of bottom-up processes with new languages, narratives, and creative dimensions. To do this, the case study of Quarticciolo public housing neighborhood in Rome will be investigated: through its analysis, a critical reading of the concept of re-foundation as a process not only cultural and social, but also spatial, is proposed, considering both architectural and urban forms as foundations of the tension between design and use, a space of negotiation for negation and possibility.