The international architecture firm Alvisi Kirimoto www.alvisikirimoto.it has completed the redesign of Piazza Giuseppe Meroldi in Montespaccato, Rome's XIII Municipality. The project is part of 15 ROMA, the city's urban regeneration program promoted by the Municipality and developed with local administrations and communities. The program includes the design of 15 different masterplans, seeking to build a city closer to citizens' daily needs—innovative, sustainable, and inclusive. Inspired by Carlos Moreno's concept of the "15-minute city," the initiative promotes a model where services, green spaces, and opportunities are accessible, reducing inequalities and improving urban life.

The new square marks a tangible step in transforming Montespaccato, setting the tone for a broader series of interventions across the city aimed at reconnecting the fragmented fabric of Rome's suburbs. 

Once a parking lot and site of the weekly market, Piazza Giuseppe Meroldi has become a symbol of regeneration, with a focus on environmental and social sustainability, as well as on reinforcing local identity and community life. It represents a true redefinition of public space as a place of inclusion and participation — all the more significant following the renovation of the municipal building bordering the square, now home to the new Biblioteca Cornelia, which offers co-working areas, study rooms, and multifunctional community spaces.

"Designing Piazza Giuseppe Meroldi meant engaging with an empty urban void, a marginal space asking to be reimagined. Our answer begins with a simple yet powerful gesture: a true urban incision while opening new possibilities for gathering, resting, and collective expression. We worked on the balance between material and landscape, between urban rigidity and social permeability, to shape a place not just to be crossed, but to be lived. In a context long marked by informal expansion and neglect, architecture becomes a tool for care, dialogue, and repair. Piazza Giuseppe Meroldi is not an object but an open process, restoring centrality to a forgotten piece of the city and reconnecting it with its community."
– Massimo Alvisi, co-founder, Alvisi Kirimoto.

Consequently, the project defines two architectural gestures, equally simple and powerful, capable of directing flows and creating two distinct yet complementary spaces: the Green Square and the Mineral Square. The Green Square covers 300 sqm with newly planted trees and landscaped beds, providing shaded resting areas and natural buffers against surrounding streets. The Mineral Square extends over 460 sqm, a flexible paved space framed by a long curving bench. 

This duality is both functional and symbolic, balancing nature and urban life, calm and vibrancy. A unified paving scheme, shifting from white to grey with marble edging, weaves the two squares into a coherent urban landscape.

Custom-designed benches in perforated white steel reinforce the fluid geometry of the square. One traces the slope of the Mineral Square, while the other runs along the retaining wall of the Green Square, creating protected and convivial seating areas.

The project enhances accessibility with barrier-free circulation and integrates new drainage and lighting systems seamlessly into the design.

With Piazza Giuseppe Meroldi, Alvisi Kirimoto delivers not only an architectural intervention but a social and cultural one. By addressing a district shaped by the informal growth of the 1950s and 1960s, the project transforms an anonymous void into a civic landmark—a space of identity, connection, and renewal. It positions the suburbs not as marginal, but as essential nodes in Rome's future development and community life.