Rozzol Melara district

Trieste

Studio Celli
1969 – 1982

The Rozzol Melara district is a Brutalist-style concrete quadrangle overlooking the city of Trieste, home to some 2,500 people to date. It was born in the early 1970s as an “independent village” on the impetus of Le Corbusier’s socio-architectural theories.

The couples (young, as per the design intent) to whom the 648 apartments were provided between 1979 and 1981 would populate a city within a city, finding within it all the services necessary to meet basic needs (school, supermarket, post office, stores of various kinds).

Today, after more than four decades, those couples and the neighbourhood have gone through alternating phases of deterioration and recovery. The great concrete creature that housed them for so long, that saw them grow and slowly age, has become part of their lives. At the same time, their lives have impressed and shaped its living quarters, semi-dark gyros, and endless corridors.