The essay aims to return the outcomes of the two-week immersive workshop proposed by the master's degree course in architectural and urban design of the Department of Architecture of the University of Roma Tre, held in September 2023 and conducted together with French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, winners of the Pritzker Prize 2021. The workshop was meant to rethink a large waste treatment plant in the city of Rome, the TMB Salario, decommissioned a few years ago following a large fire and after long years of protest by residents. Starting from some methodological assumptions proposed by the two architects, as simple as radical, such as ‘being able to recognize value in what is already there’, students imagined a new space of possibilities for the city, connected, transparent and open. The main ambition of the projects presented below is to mend a relationship of trust between the inhabitants and a space they have long suffered, and which can and must instead become an attractive, vibrant, public place.