9-12 June 2010

Rome conserves a heritage of monuments and urban spaces that have influenced architecture and cities for centuries; but it is also a storehouse of ideas and a laboratory of projects in constant evolution. Index Urbis confirms that the city of architecture is wholly contemporary: from the Roman Forum to its vaster metropolitan area. As a result, myth, reality and future define the subject of the programme.The Festival concentrates on the Nodes of the contemporary city, real nodes, essential spaces for its transformation, and the metaphorical nodes to be untied that large cities such as Rome confront with greater or lesser success.
More than its role as a national and European capital, the programme of the Festival observes Rome in comparison to other global cities, complementary to a progressively more interdependent and regionally defined planet, creating a direct connection between the Eternal City and the World.
The Architecture Festival does not celebrate the architect-demiurge, and to an even lesser degree the individuality of his/her style. A good project and good architecture are simply necessary conditions, even while insufficient, for confronting problems related to the function and representation of the city.
The Festival is directed above all at Rome’s more curious and active citizens. It is to them that we wish to offer access to mechanisms of constructing the city and its new geography. Its exploration is entrusted to the Observations of the protagonists of creativity, culture and communication, often more penetrating than those of architects. Finally, we have invited to the tribune of a series of Forums, administrators, clients and architects, to speak with the public about what to do, and what not to do.
The Festival is intended as a moment during which reflections on the city proposed by experts can overlap with those of a cultural and civil community. This is made possible by an on-line platform that will bring to the sites of the Festival contributions from figures not necessarily physically present.
The Festival also involves the city outside of the days and sites of the official programme, made possible by the participation of institutions and associations promoting numerous Collateral Events.
To quote the great scholar Kevin Lynch, in the city there is no final result, only a continuous succession of phases. This idea, visible in Rome more than in any other city, requires that we all consciously participate in its transformation (even) through architecture.

Index suggests that urban transformation must be examined using a catalogue, an ordered plurality of questions and that these, in turn, are an index of its condition. Urbis is the city in general, though, in Latin, remind us that Rome is the city par excellence.

www.indexurbis.it