Dwelling Among the Ruins

This article examines how people experiencing homelessness in Rome use archaeological ruins to secure a minimal continuity of dwelling under conditions of radical precarity. Ruins, in this reading, are not simply spatial supports or remnants of the past. Rather, they are material devices through which time becomes spatially available and through which space is experienced, inhabited, and reorganized through temporal practices. From this perspective, the article contributes to debates on space and time by shifting the focus from the general theoretical claim that space and time are inseparable to the empirical question of how this inseparability can be observed. Adopting the analytical lens of the situated project – understood as a mundane and incremental organization of urgency across space and time sustained through tactics of duration – this contribution focuses on the micro-practices of people experiencing homelessness. It shows how ruins are reconfigured into provisional forms of dwelling and how these practices redefine boundaries, functions, and tacit norms of use while producing alternative spatial orders and temporal rhythms within the city.