Collegium Helveticum
Switzerland
fellow
Lorenzo Romito
2023-2024
Home institution
University of Arts Linz, AT
Country of origin (home institution)
Austria
Discipline(s)
Earth, environmental and climate sciences; Others
Theme(s)
Environment, Sustainability & Biodiversity; Other
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Lorenzo Romito is professor of space and design strategies at the University of Arts Linz (AT). He teaches art at the NABA in Rome and the module Stalker in the master program “Environmental Humanities” at the University of Roma Tre (IT). He received the Prix de Rome Architecte of the French Academy Villa Medici in Rome (2000–2001). He is a founding member of the urban research laboratory Stalker. Through participatory action research, Stalker investigates and documents the urban, social, and ecological transformation of suburbs and border areas. Stalker has participated in various biennials and exhibitions worldwide, including the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2000, 2008, and 2014 (Swiss Pavilion). Stalker was awarded the Curry Stone Prize for social design in 2016. Lorenzo is also co-founder of other collaborative research platforms such as Osservatorio Nomade (2001–2009), PrimaveraRomana (2009–2013), Biennale Urbana (since 2014) and NoWorking (since 2016). Lorenzo is the author of several books and essays on relational architecture and the contemporary city.
Research Project
The Raft Adrift through Stories and Imaginaries of the Invisible City
The Raft–La Zattera is a Stalker project, a mobile device, a nomadic archive, via which we began through public and shared processes to collect the dispersed and removed memories of those who have inhabited the city of Rome, invisibly and informally, during its 150 year history as a capital city. The Raft evokes a condition of survival–a wandering adrift that becomes a project and strategy for reading and interpreting the traces of a largely forgotten recent history. It recalls the places and the social and cultural history of informal, migrant and subaltern Rome, the artistic representations that have embraced it, and remembers too the struggles and rights conquered through the innovatory forms it has produced in both civil and social spheres: all this thanks to the processes and languages of education and art.
At the beginning of March 2024 a three-month observatory will be taking place in Zurich, during which we will present the “cargo” of stories, memories, maps, and traces that the Raft has collected in its wanderings along those margins between memory and oblivion through the history of contemporary Rome (1870–2023).
Research Interests:
social history; cultural history