L’E42 | ROMA. Il caso di un’esposizione mai avvenuta. Segni e figure di un’idea nello sviluppo urbano in divenire.

The World’s Fair planned by Mussolini for 1942 would never take place due to the outbreak of the second world war, yet many parts of the project known as E42 remain as testimony to an important phase in the expansion of the city of Rome. This paper presents a critical overview of the plans and features, highlighting the durability over time of the original urban design, and its recognizable formal qualities and language. The survey focuses on the interaction between solids and voids, on the relationship between the anthropic system and the environmental system that over time have maintained a substantial balance, preserving the project’s original identity in the face of possible “contagions” from expansive phenomena along its periphery. Today, the phenomenon of implosion/densification breaks its immutability. Demolitions implemented and planned, and construction sites, pave the way for a new phase, whose outcome, although not yet fully assessed, forms a scenario for the future, where architecture takes shape next to the metaphysical symbols of the past to form a new image, whose face seems to be that of modernity.