Liminal Lab Monti Prenestini

City/Country Conceptions — the 2022 Monti Prenestini Lab — is the start of Liminal's longest territorial relationship. It was a course, run with University of Miami students: the work was to teach them how to engage a territory — walk it, speak with the people already working there, write down honestly what the place needed and what Liminal could offer — rather than to produce research about it.

The studio read Rome's relationship with its surrounding towns through villas, gardens and parks, then went to Castel San Pietro Romano, Capranica Prenestina, Guadagnolo and Rocca di Cave to meet local stakeholders and survey the occupancy and condition of 486 buildings in their historic centers and completion zones (ZTO A and B).

Out of seven meetings with residents, local and regional authorities and other stakeholders about the territory and its ongoing PNRR-funded projects, and with drone surveys and new orthophotos, the students produced maps of the territory, of its mobility and of itineraries for different kinds of visitor, and preliminary proposals for key sites: the arrival forecourt of Zagarolo station, the railway station nearest to the Monti Prenestini; Piazza Pietro Baccelli and a mobile display for local specialties such as the Mosciarella chestnut in Capranica Prenestina; new kinds of accommodation, the reuse of the youth hostel and a multi-purpose Piazzale Omega Centauri in Guadagnolo. The work was presented at a final review on 22 November 2022 and gathered in the report Liminal nei Monti Prenestini 2022–2023.

Later Challenges — Digital Paths, Discover Monti Prenestini, Shaping the Ground, Reviving Trails — sit on this first approximation.