It occupies a major railway node within one of Rome’s densest districts, but had become physically detached from the neighbourhood around it.

A car park formed a barrier to the north. A substantial level change limited access from the south. The station itself was the only one in Rome without lifts or escalators, a long-standing concern for local residents. The site contained existing warehouses, contaminated land and areas constrained by railway operation.

Campo Urbano approached these conditions not as obstacles to be cleared, but as the starting material for regeneration.

The challenge

The project had to combine ambitious carbon and mobility objectives with the realities of delivering on complex industrial land. The railway estate was fragmented. Existing buildings had already absorbed significant embodied carbon. Conventional parking requirements worked against the mobility objectives. The surrounding community was sceptical of large-scale redevelopment.

And the C40 framework required measurable commitments across carbon, energy, water, landscape, mobility and social value over a sixty-year horizon. The environmental strategy therefore had to be physically and economically embedded in the development rather than treated as a parallel sustainability narrative.

Design response

The masterplan began with reuse.

Existing industrial buildings were retained and converted into workshops and shared workplace. New student housing, employment, residential and makers’ spaces were arranged around an opened station square. Approximately 95 per cent of the proposed volume was placed on land that could be developed immediately, reducing dependency on more complex railway interfaces.

Mobility was reorganised around the station rather than around the car. Street parking was removed, pedestrian and cycle space increased significantly and the ground plane was made more permeable across what had previously been fragmented railway land.

Outdoor comfort was modelled hour by hour. Wind protection, solar shading and evaporative cooling increased the proportion of comfortable external hours from approximately 51 to 79 per cent of the year.

Land that could not support conventional development became productive infrastructure. Five hectares alongside the railway were developed as an energy landscape. Short-rotation forestry supplies a pyro-gasification system converting biomass and local organic waste into syngas for combined cooling, heat and power.

Open-loop geothermal systems, bio-solar roofs and thermal storage complete the district energy strategy. Biochar produced through the process returns carbon to the soil. The technical landscape is therefore also public landscape.

The proposal includes approximately two hectares of green space, 750 trees and the phytoremediation of contaminated ground. The buildings follow the same resource logic.

Existing structures are retained where possible. New workplace uses prefabricated timber, CLT floors and glulam frames. Student accommodation uses volumetric steel modules assembled under factory conditions with services and finishes already integrated.

Outcome

The submitted scheme modelled a whole-life carbon reduction of approximately 92 per cent against the business-as-usual scenario, reducing sixty-year emissions from 271,271 to 23,806 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent before becoming carbon negative by a further 3.4 per cent.

The wider strategy included approximately 88 per cent electricity self-sufficiency, zero street parking, major increases in pedestrian and cycle space and tree canopy, 39 per cent of the ground depaved, a 55 per cent reduction in water use and the conversion of all locally collected organic waste within the proposed energy system.

Campo Urbano shows how industrial land can be regenerated without erasing its productive character. Energy, mobility, landscape and construction are not treated as separate sustainability measures.

Together, they form the architecture of the district.