Jury Statement: Resurfacing is a poetic intervention that deals with the potential for the design with natural processes hidden below the asphalt surface. It uncovers the underlying strata and focuses on various levels of found effervescence. The jury recognized the depth of the analysis and the imaginative use of simple design means that establish a landscape with almost nothing, simply through subtraction, namely, perforating the asphalt surface.
The site we are introducing is located in Rome, Italy. It is just outside of the historic city, right after the historical ‘Aurelian Walls’.Like the majority of forgotten sites, it is today defined more by the elements that surround it than by its own substance. To describe it, the first reflex is to focus on its boundaries: the Ostiense station and the railway to the northwest, Via Cristoforo Colombo to the east, Via Ostiense and the Garbatella district to the south. These big circulation axes are connecting the city center with the periphery but they also cut our site from its direct and lively neighborhood. The site appears like a quiet and empty island in the middle of an urbanized and dynamic part of Rome.
However, changing the reading lens of the map allows us to realize that the story has another face. A new protagonist appears, the one who connects: the Almone river, flowing through our site.
The Almone and its valley originally occupied the complete site, linking it to the Tiber and to the wide river network of the entire region. The Almone and its valley originally occupied the complete site, linking it to the Tiber and to the wide river network of the entire region. When one looks at the map focusing not on the anthropic elements (as mentioned above), but on the so-called «natural» elements (water territory, ground condition and vegetation webs), the site appears intrinsically linked with its surroundings.
