The space of hospitality. Activism, art, architecture and urbanism in Rome

The article deals with the spatial dimension of hospitality, taking as a reference some architectural, urban and artistic projects built in the city of Rome. These projects are characterized by exploring and proposing alternative hospitality solutions to those offered by the institutional welcoming system. The first part of the text focuses on exposing the genealogy of the concept and practice of hospitality by bringing up its mythical rather than historical aspects, on which the central theoretical argument is built. Under this perspective, the article approaches the projects proposed by artists, architects, academics and activists of the housing struggle in Rome, highlighting their qualities to promote collective appropriations, understood as alternatives to the commodified forms and the state machinery of welcoming. The discourses, aesthetic practices and urban solutions generated by these politically engaged collectives could also be understood as alternative social spaces allied to the movements of struggle, and which, therefore, acquire a connotation of "concrete utopias" (Lefebvre, 1961).