Today, football clubs both in Italy and elsewhere are financed and managed like businesses. But as well as an operational base, their headquarters are also showcases for the other very special characteristics of a football club: their values, the attachment to their local community, and the fierce loyalty of their fan base. AS Roma was one of the first Italian football clubs to set up a representative head office for its top management, with meeting rooms and office spaces for its employees. With long experience in retail and interior design, the practice MRZarchitetti had already designed the club’s retail outlets in Italy’s capital city. They again won the competition, at this time for the club’s new headquarters. For a soccer club like AS Roma, the bond with its hometown is an integral part of its identity and very existence. It was only natural therefore that as well as reflecting the deep emotional ties of the club with its local base, any building chosen had to speak to the centuries old history of Rome itself. The place chosen is a rationalist building in Rome’s EUR district, a neighborhood built in the fascist era to host the Universal Exhibition in 1942 and designed by Marcello Piacentini along with the most acclaimed architects of the day. The new offices have been created with the precise intention of respecting the history and style of the building. MRZ’s project echoes this exemplar of rationalism and simplified Italian neo-classicism characterized by elegant simplicity, symmetry and solemn monumentality. The same light colors, elevations and refined materials - marble, travertine and brass - have been used in the new interior design along with the emphasis on light and large spaces, features dear to the fascist period of which Rome’s EUR quarter is an eloquent expression. As a listed building, the headquarters had to comply with strict renovation and refurbishing regulations. As well as forbidding any...
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