Boris Stoyanov
Resuscitated Ruins
UF SoA
Fall 2022
Student Housing
Professors- Michael Montoya | Sarah Gamble
Collaborators- Garrett Gruttadauria | Niah Pierre
Rome’s student housing crisis is not a logistical issue; it is an existential one. With the historic core gutted for short-term rentals, the city’s cultural continuity is fracturing, leaving students—its future inhabitants—displaced to the periphery. The daily migration from distant provinces, often exceeding an hour each way, is the direct consequence of a housing market that prioritizes visitors over residents. This project is a response, not just in the provision of housing but in its fundamental assertion that students belong in the city’s fabric.
The site, on Via Giulia, is layered with history, its ground still bearing the remnants of an ancient Roman stables. Unlike conventional development, which either builds over or sterilizes archaeological remnants, this intervention does the opposite—it acknowledges, frames, and integrates them into daily life. The ruins are not artifacts behind glass but an active landscape, fully excavated and left open to interaction. They are neither fenced nor cordoned off but exposed, becoming a part of the lived experience of the residents and the broader public.
The student housing itself is positioned with intent. Where the site is clear of ruins, it anchors itself, forming a mass that wraps the void left by excavation. Where ruins remain, the architecture lifts—suspended as lightly as possible, touching the earth at only the most necessary points. The new structure follows the rhythm of the past, tracing the gestures of the stables below without imposing upon them. This is not an act of overwriting but of dialogue, where contemporary habitation and ancient foundation exist in direct confrontation.
Above the ruins, the elevated program is reserved for the residents, reinforcing a sense of belonging within the city center. These spaces are not generic amenities but an extension of the housing itself, offering collective environments that contrast the isolation of Rome’s current student housing condition. The raised structure does not monumentalize the ruins but makes them an integral part of the everyday—where students move through and above history, not as tourists, but as inhabitants.
This project is not preservation in the conventional sense, nor is it a passive insertion. It is an argument that the historical city is not a static entity to be admired from a distance but a living condition that demands active occupation. By embedding student life into the very foundation of Rome, it resists the erasure of its cultural continuity, insisting that history and habitation are not at odds but inextricably linked.