**3. Corviale, a machine for living and adapting over time**

The Corviale district is one of the most famous and well-known symbols in the production of public cities in Rome and beyond. It is part of the first Peep and is designed for about 6800 inhabitants, with public facilities of 50 square metres per inhabitant, far above the legal minimum of 18 square metres. Of the 60 hectares of land, 36% is used for services and only 7% for buildings. This is the most striking feature of the Corviale, a single urban building almost a kilometre long and nine stores high, with a street of shops and public services, professional studios and community spaces running through its interior. It acts as a barrier at the edge of the built-up city and faces west, towards the sea and the Roman landscape, the Valle dei Casali. This creates a scenario in which nature, agricultural and urban activities merge, forming an entirely modern landscape with the Roman countryside. A neighbourhood characterised by an extreme duality between density and rarefied has come to be seen as a radical architectural exercise (**Figure 1**). The kilometre-long residential building is counterpointed by a smaller building arranged at a 45° angle to the main building and crossed by an internal street that serves the shops and ends in the facilities connecting the different buildings and the different functions, the school, the market, the multipurpose areas and the sports facilities. Looking at the concept of a residential machine, it is undoubtedly the Roman quarter that comes closer to this theory than the others. However, the solution chosen by the planners, led by Mario Fiorentino, aims to refer to the characteristics of the site and reinforce the landscape dimension of the urban. The definition of the boundary, a double boundary, that of the building, closed in on itself, and that of the city, the last bulwark built to the west in front of the landscape, form the most important architectural feature of the neighbourhood (**Figure 2**). The dimensions of the building remain one of the most important urban signs of the city of Rome. The dimensions of the building are even more pronounced as they cause the features of the landscape. Here, the echo of a duality between the building and the emptiness of the landscape reinforces the dimensions of the one urban system—the building. Given the vastness of the emptiness of the landscape and the horizon, the house-city aqueduct stands out as a symbol of redemption for the working class who are the least of these—a popular house with a unique aesthetic.

Throughout its life, the building has undergone a series of signs and adjustments that represent a continuous deviation from the planners' intentions; in some cases, the residents reject the sophisticated architectural solutions. The management of a building of this complexity was not in the hands of the regional authority that manages public housing in Rome and Lazio (Ater), and the housing machine immediately yielded to the adjustments and changes that created space between the rooms abandoned to neglect, especially the non-residential rooms used temporarily for residential

**Figure 1.** *Corviale. Credit: Julian Schubert.*

**Figure 2.** *Corviale. Credit: Laboratorio di Città Corviale.*

purposes. The failure to open public facilities was the leading cause of the conversion of the fourth floor into temporary accommodation. This phenomenon can also be observed in other public housing neighbourhoods in Rome, for example, in Lurentino
