Water management was a central ideological tenet to the formation of Roman urbanization, wherein the external ground of the street, the internal ground of the home and the city’s roofscape were conceived as a single infrastructure device. The modern city has lost sight of some of these basic landscape and architectural ideas, offsetting much of the rain/water problems to the street and the overburdened combined sewer of increasingly dense urban centers. The aim of our work in Rome will be to revive an understanding of a transdisciplinary methods for conceiving urban water management. Our investigations will begin with a study of the external atrium as deployed in the various densities and situational housing typologies of the single-family domus, the multifamily insula, and the enclave typologies of the palazzo and villa. Our emphasis will be on the Roman’s combined approach of the impluvium and compluvium as an infrastructural methodology that incorporated the capture and diversion of stormwater within the boundary of the building footprint, using both architectural and landscape form as one.