roma continua: building on its ancient layers, OMA reveals 25-year vision for rome

The proposal for Rome creates a new urban framework by treating the city as an active system shaped by landscape, infrastructure, and overlooked sites. Rome’s history is read through its streets, and the next layer is planned to remain legible while evolving over the next twenty-five years. The plan responds to a competition vision by focusing on growth through recalibration, using rivers, parks, transport gaps, residual plots, and cultural pressure points as a unified architectural reading. It begins with existing green structure, where the Tiber and tributaries guide five green corridors for recreation, ecological repair, agriculture, and public health. Five multimodal mobility hubs act as civic “forums of innovation,” combining transit, housing, services, hospitality, and riverside amenities, with cycling networks extending up to five kilometers from the hubs.

"Roma Continua frames a new civic map for Rome Roma Continua, the winning vision for Rome by IT'S and OMA, proposes a new urban framework for the Italian capital by working through its landscape, infrastructure, and overlooked sites. Rome is a city of layers, meaning that its history can be read through its streets. It's at once frozen in time, and constantly building upon itself. Now, the ancient city is to see its next chapter, and while it will remain legible as Rome, the proposal asks how this next layer might take shape over the coming twenty-five years."

"Developed with OKRA, NET Engineering, and a wider interdisciplinary team, the proposal responds to the Roma REgeneration Foundation's Vision for Rome competition with a plan that treats the city as an active system. Its focus is growth through recalibration, with rivers, parks, transport gaps, residual plots, and cultural pressure points brought into one larger architectural reading."

"Laying down the Roma Continua masterplan, and IT's begins with the city's existing green structure. The Tiber and its tributaries guide five green corridors, each assigned a specific role across recreation, ecological repair, agriculture, and public health. The move gives Rome's landscape a more active civic role, turning rivers and open ground into a network that can support movement, climate resilience, and new public space."

"Along these corridors, five multimodal mobility hubs are imagined as 'forums of innovation.' The name suggests a contemporary reading of a Roman civic type, where exchange happens through infrastructure as much as public life. These hubs combine transit, housing, services, hospitality, and riverside amenities, forming a loop that links public transport with last-mile movement. Cycling networks extend up to five kilometers from the forums, allowing the plan to work at a human scale while still addressing metropolitan"

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