Francesca Donatelli

Degree thesis in Architectural Design

Recovery of the former Snia Viscosa industrial area in Rome

Thesis by Francesca Donatelli
E-mail: [email protected]
Faculty of Architecture Valle Giulia - Sapienza of Rome
Degree in EU Architecture
Speaker: Prof. Laura Valeria Ferretti
A.A. 2013 - 2014

Just a few hundred meters from Porta Maggiore, in a dense and completely built up fabric, I discover a void: the former Snia Viscosa. In a neighborhood where the space to socialize, to move away from the chaos of traffic, is never enough, an unplayed possibility arises.
From the street front, you can see, beyond the heavy surrounding wall, the old buildings, but inside the vegetation is massive, you can hear the songs of the birds and beyond the thick crown of the trees you can see a pond.
It is the secret garden of the Snia Viscosa.
The area is abandoned to itself, forgotten by the owners: a private individual for a portion and the municipality for the remaining part. The plant of the old factory also included the fraction of adjacent land, the one that includes the Energy Park and the social center, as well as the small nucleus of few activities in the narrow alley that creeps into the middle of the park.
It is a place representative of the birth of the Prenestino Labicano district, a lively and colorful neighborhood that owes its connotation precisely to industries, such as Snia Viscosa, which first chose this territory to settle, decisively characterizing the neighborhood as a proletarian neighborhood . Today the workers have been replaced by the students, but the popular spirit still lives on the streets of this early Roman suburbs.
What remains of the Snia Viscosa is a monument to history.