Francesco Careri’s lecture addresses the theme of hospitality from the perspective of architecture and the city, identifying-primarily in the city of Rome-a series of political, artistic, and academic experiences that are concretely shaping that act which has already been highlighted by linguists, philosophers, and anthropologists: hospitality as a threshold capable of transforming the foreigner into a guest.
Within the architectural space, that threshold is a theatrical machine capable of inverting roles, of constructing that limbo which suspends and blurs the boundaries of property, which allows for ambiguity and ambivalence, and which conflates opposing figures such as the certain and the uncertain, the nomadic and the sedentary, the domestic and the institutional, the formal and the informal, the legal and the illegal.
In the urban space, the threshold expands, becoming visible and public through certain political and artistic experiences that are able to create places returning to guests the power to once again become those who extend hospitality. In Rome, the occupation of housing by housing rights movements has given rise to intercultural condominiums that stand as valid alternatives to institutional reception systems and emergency housing schemes.
Moreover, academic research also identifies strategies and urban policies that generate imaginaries and projects for a hospitable city. Finally, there is a project-Porto Fluviale RecHouse, jointly developed by public administrations and the housing rights movement, and currently under implementation-that proposes a model of urban intervention grounded in hospitality.