The Library of Spolia, Simonpietro Salini

The project develops the Library of Spolia and its catalogue, a new public institution for the reuse of architectural fragments in Rome and a set of instructions on how they could be reused. The library sets out a system for borrowing and maintaining of a public collection of fragments. It sits between contractors and organizations, managing materials and offering their reuse through public tenders, as a mean to maintain them as public resource. Set along the Aventine’s slopes, its structure recovers the lost function of an ancient commercial route for the arrival and collection of materials. The library aims to bring the culture of reuse at the core of Rome's contemporary life, providing a framework to combine storage and display for a constantly changing collection of materials. The project questions the possibility of an endless circularity, as it argues that if maintained well, the reuse of building materials could go beyond a second life and reach multiple adaptations on a longer timespan. Through this new framework, the library calls for a plural understanding of Rome’s identity, a system to support its ongoing transformation as an endless recycling of its built fabric where nothing is lost and everything is transformed.