Thesis title: Roma. Laboratori di natura imprevista
This research investigates the possibility of overcoming the dichotomy between nature and culture, and more specifically between nature and the city, starting from the observation of certain urban contexts in which the unplanned emergence of the living has produced unexpected ecological, social, and spatial configurations. Moving from a reflection on the crisis of the modern city and on the dispositifs that have historically structured its development (productive, infrastructural, and symbolic), the thesis focuses on those fractures, gaps, and ruins that emerge as the outcome of planning failures, deindustrialization, and incomplete processes of transformation.
In these contexts, nature does not reappear as a residual or decorative element, but as an active agent capable of redefining urban relationships, practices, and imaginaries. Through a theoretical approach inspired by the contributions of authors such as Gilles Clément, Donna Haraway, and Anna Tsing, and through fieldwork conducted in Rome, the research analyzes two case studies - the Lago Bullicante of the former SNIA Viscosa and the Pratone of Torre Spaccata - understood as spaces in which forms of coexistence between human and non-human are observed and experimented, alongside collective practices of care and processes of situated learning.
The investigation does not aim to define replicable models, but rather to propose an interpretative key capable of reading these experiences as Laboratori di natura imprevista (Laboratories of Unexpected Nature): an original expression introduced in this thesis to indicate urban contexts in which the interruption of ordinary dispositifs of control and functionalization makes possible the development of ecological, social, and knowledge practices that are open, not fully predictable, and deeply rooted in place. In this sense, the research seeks to contribute to the debate on imaginaries and practices of urban transformation, suggesting hypotheses of change that emerge from below, from experience, and from the relationship with the living in all its forms.
As emerges from the fieldwork, the Laboratori di natura imprevista can be understood as places of quietness and, at the same time, turbulence: spaces in which even minor yet incisive forms of subversion are produced, capable of questioning consolidated arrangements. They are places of sharing, mixing, and exchange, where forms of experimentation and collective learning take place through everyday practices and situated relations. They are contexts in which forms of collaboration among different species - humans, animals, and plants - are exercised, consolidating a shared sense of ecological belonging and opening up new combinations and modes of coexistence. With the aim of prefiguring an idea of the city not as a closed and fully governable system, but as an open field, traversed by processes in the making.