The residential neighborhood of Rozzol Melara is a giant complex situated on the outskirts of Trieste. It was designed in the twentieth century and intended as a self-sufficient city, a rather confined settlement for fragile people and minorities, with the optimistic intent of housing up to 2500 people.
It has been designed by a large number of architects between 1968 and 1982, and it shares its vision and dimension with other renowned italian examples of brutalist architecture, such as Le vele in Scampia, ZEN in Palermo, Il Corviale in Rome, “il Biscione” in Genoa. These are all examples of rationalist-style buildings of the seventies, which due to their dimensions and utopian visions have become ghettos, relegated to the outskirts of cities.
Rozzol Melara is also known as “The Quadrangle” (Il Quadrilatero) because of its plan layout, composed of two big Ls of 200 metres per side reaching a height of 14 floors. This choice is due the disposition of the project area (inclined).
It is also known by another name, which emerges from the collective image of the architecture of that period, made of good propositions and exposed concrete: Alcatraz, the most popular prison of the world.
The utopian view that brought to the design of the building comes from the school of the french architect Le Corbusier, developed in the first decades of the last century, way before the construction of this popular district. This is proof of the huge influence of these socio-architectural theories, so much as to shape design decisions that might seem anachronistic for that time.
The building included several places intended for “community life”, along with services and uses designed for a differently envisioned future development, as it happened for the Villaggio del Sole (Udine). The reference goes for instance to the driveway, crossing diagonally the internal area of the quadrangle, the result of some sort of research for self-sufficiency and comfort deriving from the mindset economic boom, which could not picture the widespread use of the car and the increase in travels of the following century.
The design of the project foresaw a series of dispositions in this popular neighbourhood which had been planned to enhance public areas and encourage the residents to inhabit together these places. The archival photos testify small squares emerging from surrounding green spots, large hallways and horizontal walkways meant to connect various parts of the quadrangle.
The void in the centre however, a huge courtyard of 3 hectares, has become a “no man’s land”, a space which is conceptually difficult to cross because it is exposed to the watchful eye of all the windows overlooking it, that seem to track every move of the “foreigners”, who are not aware of the unwritten law ruling this place.
Large empty areas, wide, made of concrete, punctuated by giant pillars, are the setting for a lifestyle which is probably not that of the “community” which was expected. They become voids, occupied, conquered and freed of the vague definition intended for them: a common topic in our research project.
Has public space and its shape ever worked for its functionalities? Have people ever felt entitled to inhabit it? Which way?