Cultural Box. Labics, Campus Bio-Medico, Roma Nuovi paesaggi dell'apprendimento

The volume illustrates the conception and construction of the new facility designed by the Labics architecture studio and headed by Campus Bio-Medico. The work is part of a broader panorama of architecture for culture and education that explore the theme of typological flexibility and the search for solutions arising from an integrated and multidisciplinary approach. With texts by Maria Claudia Clemente, Francesco Isidori, Domenico Mastrolitto, Luca Molinari, Carlo Tosti and Beate Weyland, the book recounts the principal elements and the implementation of the vision that inspired the development programme of the Bio-Medical Campus, from the conduct of the international competition that promoted it until the present. A vision linked to the Social Green Masterplan which, in keeping with the One Health paradigm, pursues a developmental model based on the integration of different and complementary disciplines by which human, animal and ecosystemic health are inextricably bound up with each other. Cultural Box, the project narrated here, through specific architectural and educational contributions, embodies the conception of a large university city-park capable of safeguarding and developing the most varied areas of health. In the natural and landscape context of Rome’s countryside, through the extensive use of porticoes, loggias and a large internal courtyard, the building creates a structured system of open spaces that amplify the relations between inside and outside, facilitating social interactions and opportunities for learning. The Cultural Box project was designed by Labics, an architectural and urban planning practice, founded in Rome in 2002 by Maria Claudia Clemente and Francesco Isidori. The name Labics expresses the idea of a laboratory, a fertile ground in which ideas circulate. Combining theoretical research and applied experimentation, the studio’s field of interests ranges from urban design to the design of internal spaces, so traversing the different scales and complexities of the project.

The photographic documentation presented in the volume is the work of Aldo Amoretti and Filippo Romano.

Bilingual volume in Italian and English, with translation by Richard Sadleir.