Workshops

Self Made City

First International Workshop; February 2009
Discussions, presentations at Istituto Svizzero di Roma and guided tour on Via Casilina

During the 1st international Workshop “SELF MADE CITY” /informal Rome in the framework of a guided tour we visited different settlements born from 1890 until the 1970is in order to illustrate different periods of informal settlements. During our visit we met several representative of self organization in Valle Borghesiana. During the discussions and presentations at Istituto Svizzero di Roma our guests exchanged different experiences and observation methods in multidisciplinary research projects.

Imparare da Borghesiana

2nd International Workshop on the Informal City, July 2009
Workshop on Field in Public History in Valle Borghesiana, Roma

In the framework of the 2nd international workshop: Imparare da Borghesiana / workshop on field in Public History, with the local inhabitants of Borghesiana and its surroundings, in collaboration with Consorzi di Autorecupero and local neighbourhoods assemblies, we started collecting personal stories and collective experiences of political struggles in order to reconstruct the history of these informal settlements, still in the urban recovery process, without forgetting the migrants as new inhabitants of these settlements and the large urban transformations in the new built settlements called “Centralità” in even farther outskirts of the city.

A first step of the workshop was the Report from Borghesiana

S.M.U.R. Workshop

first workshop in the framework of the ehibition progect Self Made Unrbanism Rome
November 15th – 18th 2012 at Goethe Institut Rome and on Via Casilina.

Via Casilina traverses the southeast of Rome from Porta Maggiore (right behind Termini Central Station) to the rural outskirts of the city and beyond. Its youth gangs, adjacent quarters and public housing schemes were a preferred location for Neorealist filmmaking; Pier Paolo Pasolini shot “Accatone” and “Mama Roma” here. Alongside the street different habitats line up: Remnants of shacks build beneath the antique aqueducts, Roma settlements that have forcibly been vacated recently and ample self build quarters. The exhibition Self Made Urbanism projects the urban axis of Via Casilina across the nGbK gallery space focussing on some of its nodal points but also extends and pursues its links to Europe and beyond to the Global South. In focusing on the periphery of Rome the exhibition looks at processes of “informality” as a laboratory of people’s initiatives, social struggles and political negotiations. Taking the example of Via Casilina we will debate the right to the city, processes of appropriation and the self-made formation of urban spaces.

download programme pdf (435 KB): Programme Workshop 2012