The space of hospitality. Activism, art, architecture and urbanism in Rome

Abstract

The article approaches the theme of the concrete utopias produced by hospitality from the point of view of architecture and the city, identifying political, artistic and academic experiences that are constructing that space already highlighted by linguists, philosophers and anthropologists: hospitality as a threshold capable of transforming the foreigner into a guest. In architectural space, that threshold is a theatrical machine capable of reversing roles, of constructing that limbo that suspends and makes property boundaries opaque, that allows ambiguities and ambivalence, that confuses opposing figures such as certain and uncertain, nomadic and sedentary, domestic and institutional. In urban space, the threshold is extended, becomes visible and public thanks to political and artistic experiences that have created places capable of giving guests the power to host in turn. In Rome, the housing struggle movements have produced intercultural condominiums as viable alternatives to the institutional welcome systems and to the housing emergency; artistic and academic researchers have identified urban strategies and policies producing imagery and projects for a hospitable city. Finally a project, Porto Fluviale RecHouse, drawn up jointly by the administration and the housing struggle movement, and currently being implemented - proposes a model of urban intervention based on hospitality.