URBS: New Cultural Space in Rome Blends Memory, Art, and Craft

In Rome's Testaccio district, a new cultural space called URBS has opened, functioning as a creative laboratory, lifestyle brand, and commercial venue (with a second location in Trastevere). Founded in 2024 by architect Andrea D'Antrassi in collaboration with Giovanni Colombara, URBS debuted as The Smallest Museum by URBS—a 20-square-meter space housing over 1,600 historical postcards of Rome, forming a visual archive spanning different eras. A public mailbox outside maintains the analog character of the space. Currently, the postcard collection dialogues with the exhibition "Not Mine, Not Yours" by Iranian artist Mehrdad Shadrooh, curated by Barbara Blasi. The show draws from a family video-photographic archive covering over eighty years of history, presenting intimate images of weddings, childhoods, and daily life that shift from private to collective narrative. Shadrooh (born 1997 in Mashhad) is an architect and visual designer who earned a Bachelor of Architecture from Eqbal Lahoori Institute of Higher Education in Mashhad (2015–2019) and a Master of Architecture Engineering from Islamic Azad University of Neyshabur (2020–2022). He is currently pursuing a Master in Landscape Architecture at Sapienza University of Rome (from 2023). Alongside his architectural work, Shadrooh has developed an independent research practice in photography and video, using these media as tools for visual inquiry into reality's complexity.