Pietà: Emancipating Potentials West of RomeEunsol Jo and Evangelos Stampelos
The project begins with an act of pietà toward the territory—understood not as sentiment, but as an ethical acknowledgment of the effort required to enter, traverse, and engage with a neglected landscape in West Rome. The site is marked by abandoned agricultural land, uneven and resistant terrain, and a long history of social and spatial stigmatization. Embedded institutions such as St. Maria della Pietà and a juvenile detention facility remain physically present yet socially detached, reinforcing conditions of isolation and symbolic exclusion. Approaching this territory therefore demands not intervention as imposition, but commitment as responsibility.
In response, the proposal of a metropolitan agricultural park transcends productivity and operates as a socio-ecological infrastructure of the commons. Conceived as a threshold rather than a destination, the park is activated through shared practices of cultivation, care, and occupation. These practices generate a renewed sense of belonging that extends into adjacent residential fabrics, gradually repositioning the territory beyond its inherited marginality. Here, centrality is no longer defined as a fixed point, but as a lived and collective condition—emerging through sustained engagement with the landscape.