Occupied! Spin Time Labs, Scomodo, ACTION, and a Big Building in the City Center

The building's entrance on via di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.  Note information boards on both sides.  The banner
reads: "The right to housing is sacrosanct." 

It's an undistinguished building, to say the least. Despite its enormous footprint--occupying the end of a city block on the Esquilino, bounded by via Carlo Emmanuele, via Statilia, and via di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (the latter a major thoroughfare running southeast off Piazza Vittorio Emanuele)--it is forgettable, pedestrian architecture of the sort that was all too common in the 1960s and 1970s.

"Read Scomodo" (a basement pillar)

In this case, what matters is what's inside, and fortunately, the building's contents were at least partially suggested by information boards on the via Santa Croce side.  One board revealed that there were all kinds of things going on inside: the ground floor housed a social service center, an afternoon school, and a "mini-basket" facility, where children could learn to play basketball; next floor up, an enoteca (wine shop), a wood-working facility, and something called the "spin beer lab." There's a theater on the 2nd floor and, on the 3rd, a religious center and a place to take lessons in the martial arts. From a personal friend, we also knew that the building housed the offices of "Scomodo" (meaning, roughly, "uncomfortable"), an excellent left-leaning, muck-raking magazine produced and distributed by young Romans, and now mainly online.

Two of the information boards.

Another board provided some background.  The building was once occupied by INPDAP (a government agency responsible for providing assistance to public employees), then for some years abandoned, before being "occupied"--that is, taken over, illegally and informally--in October 2013 by a group known as "ACTION," for housing purposes.  The group began to reclaim some of the floors, went on a hunger strike--for what purpose remains unclear--and obviously (from the right information board), launched a variety of cooperative institutions and services that together constitute an effort to create an alternative community.  There's even an osteria.

Today "ACTION" remains involved. However, as still another board explains, most everything is done under the auspices of the group "Spin Time Labs." The building is now home to 150 families (about 450 people), including immigrants, many of them once homeless or otherwise in need of a place to stay.  And all this has happened in a building the occupants--whether the 150 families or Spin Time Labs--don't own.

Occupied buildings are common in Rome, and oddly (from an American perspective) tolerated--until they're not, which can be a long time. (We wrote in 2011 about the occupation of a theater.) Covering the occupations, the newspaper Il Messaggero noted that a building that once housed the Treasury Ministry was occupied for many years by the right-wing organization, CasaPound. Il Messaggero seemed especially irritated that those occupying the buildings did not pay the appropriate fees.

Our first encounter with the structure was in mid-April, 2019.  By mid-May, the building, and Spin Time Labs, were at the center of a major controversy.  Neighbors of the building were upset--indeed, enraged--that the occupied structure was hosting loud, well-attended late-night (or all-night) parties, featuring a disco, drugs, and heavy drinking. It was impossible to sleep, they said, and in the morning the area was a mess: mounds of trash and hundreds of empty beer bottles.

Late-night, nearly-morning revelers.

One of the most offensive of the parties, "Notte Scomoda," put on in December, 2018 by Scomodo magazine in their basement quarters, was visited by a number of motorcycles (there's a vehicle ramp leading downward, off via Carlo Emanuele), whose riders surely enjoyed revving their engines in that echo-y subterranean space.

The ramp off via Carlo Emanuele

The legendary motorcycle party.  Neighbors not in favor. 

This could be the space used by the motorcycle rally.

Aside from the noise problem, the parties raised once again the issue of whether building occupations were and should be tolerated by the authorities. It was noted that Forte Prenestina had been occupied since 1986, and that another troublesome "entertainment" occupation, at "Strike spa" in Portonaccio (both farther from the city center), had been ongoing since 2002. (See our post here, about Rome's issues with immigration and housing, and here, about Rome "capital of evictions.")

Even the Vatican came in for censure. When Spin Time Labs failed to pay the building's electric bill, the electricity was cut off, then restored through the intercession of one Cardinal Krajewski (who has some sort of official church role in that area of Rome), who apparently did so on the grounds that there were 450 poor people depending on it. In addition, Il Messaggero claimed that Spin Time Labs was exploiting the idea of helping those in need of housing in order to hold enormous social events and makes lots of money: thousands attending every weekend, each paying about $10 to enter, dance, and carouse. 

If we read the information boards correctly, those involved in the occupation have long been interested in the re-use of materials, and with good reason. When INPDAP moved out, they left behind enormous amounts of stuff.  We know this because when we visited the building--by invitation of our Scomodo friend--we were witness to the ongoing cleanup required to clear space for Scomodo's offices and social events.

A basement area that needs to be cleaned up, contents sorted.  Dianne is holding up a sign from one of the parties.  Note that beer is more expensive than wine--the norm in Italy. 

A very old film projector.

Some rooms--including one (above) that resembles the newspaper photo featuring the motorcycles--have been emptied and cleaned.

Graffiti on the basement walls would suggest that housing remains a high priority for those occupying the building.

"Too many people without houses.  Too many houses without people." 

Italy has some 50,000 people without housing,

We've never been on the building's upper floors, never seen the osteria or the enoteca or the areas where families live.  Maybe next year.

Bill

The Ponte della Musica: Update, 2015

Ponte della Musica, much busier than usual on a soccer night.  The Stadio Olimpico is close by.  Monte Mario in the background.  View from our apartment.  Skateboarding space below left.  

The Ponte della Musica (2011) sits astride the Tevere at the big bulge of the Flaminio quartiere, with Monte Mario (straight ahead), Olympic Stadium (up river) and Prati (down river).  We wrote about the bridge two years ago, ambivalently, praising the elegance of its white, skeletal, curving plasticity while questioning its originality, noting its resemblance to two much older bridges, the Bac da Roda bridge in Barcelona (1987) and the Valencia bridge (1995), both by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.  Although we found the bridge more useful than did some critics, we subtitled that first piece "the bridge to nowhere."

Today we offer a different "angle" on the bridge, both figuratively and literally.  In June of this year we lived on the 6th floor of one of four 1930s-era apartment houses on Piazza Gentile da Fabriano, with an enormous terrace that overlooked the Ponte.  No one in Rome lives closer to the bridge, or has a better view.

The city, and the Alban Hills beyond, at dusk from Lo Zodiaco on Monte Mario.  The white triangle, center right in the distance, is Calatrava's unfinished swimming pool. 

French military cemetery.

From that position--unusual and privileged, we understand--we thoroughly enjoyed the access the bridge offered.  We hiked up Monte Mario (400 feet vertical) at least four times, enjoying the views of St. Peter's, the stunning views from the bar Lo Zodiaco, then dipping into the pleasures of new neighborhoods (Balduina and Trionfale) while discovering new sites (the amazing French military cemetery, Piazza Walter Rossi) and new paths on the mountain. All because of the Ponte.

We had cacio e pepe at Cacio e Pepe.

We also made several forays into Prati, whose northern end begins just downriver across the bridge. Piazza Mazzini, with its lovely fountain, came into our orbit, as did the jazz club Alexanderplatz and a guided tour of "liberty" architecture--all within walking distance of "our" bridge, and we enjoyed a well-known area restaurant, Cacio e Pepe (Dianne reviewed it not too positively for Tripadvisor), and two Lungotevere bars, one just across the Ponte, the other a long block south.  At the latter, and out for just a drink, we found live music and a free spread of food.

One of many brooding buildings in Prati.

That said, Prati--probed from the north, anyway--is not the most interesting or welcoming area.
Enormous, gloomy apartment houses--most built without provision for the commercial establishments that breathe life into a neighborhood--abound on Prati's north end, and its center is laced with block-long, deadening military establishments.  The southern end of Prati is lively and inviting, but it's also full of tourists--and it's a long walk (about 2 miles) from the Ponte della Musica.

Gymnast doing backflips for the camera.  

From our 6th-floor perch we also learned that the bridge is important for the activities it fosters, which take place on the bridge and under it.  Because the bridge is (for now) closed to motorized vehicles, and lies outside the regular tourist areas, it's open to a wider range of activities than the city's other pedestrian-only bridges.  It's used for photo shoots--some of them, at least, with a professional air--featuring groups of men with cameras taking pictures of dressed-up young women. One day we witnessed a small crew filming a gymnast doing backflips.

Exercise class. 

The wooden side walkways attract individuals and couples, reading, talking, contemplating, relaxing as they look out over the Tevere.  The wood walkways are also frequently used for yoga-like exercising, both by individuals and large, leader-led and organized groups. Joggers are frequent.

Dude dancing on the bridge.

The Ponte is also a performance space.  On one occasion, three young women posed for a male companion while standing on the end-of-bridge stanchions.  On another, we observed an aging
hipster, fresh from a physical confrontation with a nearby bar owner over an unpaid bill, break out into a strutting Michael Jackson-like moon dance.

Skateboarders--and graffiti

Below the main deck, skateboarders practice their skills on the large, flat concrete surface at the Ponte's Flaminio end, leaping on and off sleek granite benches that were likely not intended for that purpose.

Glass, broken cables, and a homeless man trying to sleep.

We enjoyed watching the skateboarders, but not everyone thinks they're a positive addition. In a letter published in La Repubblica, one citizen linked the skateboarders to the graffiti that mars the bridge, especially down below. Whether there's a connection or not we can't say, but there's no doubt that graffiti--and more generally, the destructive behavior of young people--is a problem below the deck, where ugly tagging mars the walls and broken beer bottles litter the stairways.  A homeless man was sleeping under the bridge.  Some of the wire cables that form the sides of the stairways were broken.  Graffiti has begun to appear on the vertical bridge supports on the upper level, though someone--most likely the city--painted over it during our June stay (in a color that didn't quite match).

Scooter on the Ponte della Musica, a pedestrian bridge.

The serenity of the bridge's main deck was interrupted on two occasions that we observed, when motorscooters violated the law and
used the bridge to cross the Tevere.  On one occasion, a young man of about 14, dressed in what might be described as the uniform of a junior police officer--or some kind of boy scout--upbraided the offending moto rider--who, apparently nonplussed, proceeded across the bridge.


And so it goes, at the Ponte della Musica.

Bill

Evening romance on the Ponte della Musica.  

Trailer Living, Rome

We took this photo at quite a distance because we would have been embarrassed to be noticed.  The subject was the trailer with the blue tarp cover, and the people near it, in the middle of the photo.  The trailer was parked at the side of the viaduct (via P. Colonna) that connects the Marconi quartiere with Monteverde Vecchio to the northwest.

  To compensate for the distance, we've blown it up some here.  The billboard at left advertises Malta as a  vacation destination.  The wall graffiti reads "Noi Oltre," a reference to a right-wing group.

    And here we've blown it up some more.  We see a woman (left) and a man (seated), and a vehicle that doesn't look like it's ready to go anywhere.  The trailer appears to be their home, at least temporarily.  There are thousands of people in Rome who live in inadequate quarters.  But they're usually in discrete camps on the outskirts.  The   trailer--and especially its location, in a busy urban area not far from the Centro--is an unusual accomodation.     Bill