Studio Transit

By Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi - 3 November 2011

Transit was founded in the early Seventies. In forty years it has figured as one of the capital’s most active practices. It has built many underground railway stations; popular economy building complexes; three towers in the Tiburtino district, now familiar landmarks; commercial centres like Cinecittà Two; office buildings such as the Health Ministry’s on viale Oceano Pacifico; urban plans like the new 805,000 m3 Europarco-Castellaccio centrepoint. Since 2005 the firm has been going through a reshuffle to replace two founder members who died, Maurizio Macciocchi and Evaristo Nicolao, and a third, Danilo Parisio, who opted out to design interiors. Gianni Ascarelli’s team is now Roberto Becchetti, Manuela De Micheli, Alessandro Pistolesi and Sergio Vinci. One of the buildings that best illustrate the practice today is the recent brief for some 90 dwellings at Casalbertone. The area stands in Rome’s first periphery which has been in the throes of a housing boom. The firm’s operation shows an approach to planning which is both novel and reassuring. Novel, since it goes for the contemporary look using dynamic shapes, some of them deconstructionist in origin, and modern materials in line with experiments in other European cities that are less traditional-minded than our own capital. Reassuring, because this is a zero-cube operation, in the sense that it adds no new volume to what it substitutes and restyles. Again following the Italian approach, its buildings dialogue with the surrounding older architecture: it avoids glaring breaks with the street plan or town skyline and mingles modern with typical existing materials. The practice is also based on sustainable principles and has won several certification with Casaclima and with the American LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). The Casalbertone building that replaces an ice factory develops on a rectangular plot cut through by a sideroad and abutting on the highway that forms the backbone of the...