Opening remarks 
Massimiliano Smeriglio – Councillor for Culture, Roma Capitale
Francesco Giambrone – Superintendent, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma
Giulia Fiocca and Lorenzo Romito – Curators of the exhibition Abitare le rovine del presente

Elisa Mattei – Resident of the former police headquarters in Quarticciolo 

Roundtable moderated by Bottega Quarticciolo 
Cristiana Perrella – Artistic Director, MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome
Francesco Careri and Fabrizio Finucci – Roma Tre University, Department of Architecture
Francesco Arena e Andrea Bonadio – Teatro dell’Opera di Roma
Lorenza Baroncelli – Direttore Dipartimento MAXXI Architettura e Design contemporaneo
Silvia La Pergola – Architetto senior dell’Ufficio Mostre del MAXXI
Claudia Reale – Architetto senior dell’Ufficio Mostre del MAXXI

Giulia Fiocca and Lorenzo Romito – Curators of the exhibition Abitare le rovine del presente
Marie Kraft – Director, Circolo Scandinavo
Giulio Grillo – Rebiennale Venezia (remote) 
Social carpentry workshops of SpinTime and CSOA eXSnia 

Closing Remarks 
Mauro Caliste – President, Municipio V of Roma Capitale 
Department for the Peripheries, Roma Capitale
Giuseppe Battaglia – Department for the Peripheries, Roma Capitale

Beyond the scheduled speakers, the invitation is extended to those involved in social carpentry workshops, to people working in the city’s cultural institutions, and to those active in neighbourhoods across Rome’s peripheries. 

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Quarticciolo is separated from the rest of the city by an invisible border. In the large Stalker map, produced with IURmap and Scomodo and presented at MACRO as part of the exhibition Abitare le rovine del presente, the neighbourhood does not appear far from areas now considered central. Yet being born in the housing blocks between Via Palmiro Togliatti and Via Prenestina still means having fewer chances of completing secondary school than someone born in Centocelle or Torrino—let alone someone born near Via Nizza. It often means unemployment or low-paid work, and walking through streets where many shutters remain closed. 

At Quarticciolo, Abitare le rovine del presente raises the question of how to reinhabit the ruins produced by decades of neglect in public housing neighbourhoods, and how to imagine a productive reconversion of an area where income is now largely distributed through the local drug market. Addressing this issue requires starting from the capacities and needs of those who live in the neighbourhood and looking at a city where, as the Bank of Italy has noted, wealth weighs more than income and social mobility is often shaped by inherited assets. 

Reconnecting Quarticciolo to the city requires imagining new spaces of production and new ways of using them collectively. The central question is simple: what should people living in Quarticciolo make a living from? Answering it means bringing together the aspirations and skills of residents with the concrete opportunities offered by the city, linking productive specialisations, labour market dynamics, exchanges between universities and local territories, and the effectiveness of public policies. 

Since the time of Quintino Sella, there has been discussion about how Rome’s extraordinary concentration of research institutes, museums, academies and cultural institutions could become a defining economic vocation for the city. Rome is among Europe’s leading cities in terms of university students and hosts a significant share of Italy’s audiovisual workforce, while tourism continues to reach new records each year. Yet the cultural and knowledge industries still distribute their positive effects unevenly, while their impact on the housing market is felt as far as the Grande Raccordo Anulare. 

The discussion aims to open a concrete reflection on possible forms of collaboration between cultural institutions, universities and neighbourhoods. One reference point is the experience of Venice, where the Biennale allows exhibition structures to have a second life: several cooperative carpentry workshops reuse panels, structures and furnishings to create new objects, equip community spaces and build exhibition displays, generating skilled employment. 

The proposal is that something similar could take place in Quarticciolo, reusing stage and exhibition materials discarded by the Teatro dell’Opera and activating a collaboration with the Department of Architecture of Roma Tre University and the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale. 

The goal is to launch a pilot initiative capable of strengthening the work of the many social carpentry workshops already active in the city, reopening spaces where everything has closed and helping to reconnect Quarticciolo with the wider city. 

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The event will take place within the exhibition Abitare le rovine del presente.

Free admission until capacity is reached.