Speculative Project

Location: Rome, Italy

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Trastevere is a vibrant Roman neighborhood with ancient origins located southwest of the Vatican along the west bank of the Tiber. However, the vitality of the quarter situated between the medieval wall of Trastevere and the Vatican has been adversely affected for more than a century by the disjointed relationship between the fifteenth-century Via della Lungara and the nineteenth-century elevated Lungotevere Gianicolense, as well as by the Carcere di Regina Coeli, a major prison, which sprawls in the narrow gap between the older, Renaissance artery and the steep slope of the Janiculum Hill.

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Daniel DeGreve explored how the working class quarter could be re-stitched in the absence of the prison, augmented with a combination of government ministry buildings and traditional neighborhood development, and better connected to the Ponte Mazzini as well as the quarter directly across it. After presenting the graduate studio project to officials in Rome, Daniel revisited his design schema in 2012 and tweaked the proposed piazza in the center of the re-envisioned quarter.

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