After devoting the first semester to the study of storage sites for inanimate objects, the TEXAS studio turned its attention in the second semester to the storage of living beings. On this occasion, various lines of thought and exploration — territorial, historical, cultural, political — were crossed to set the framework for project-based research into the question of storage and community, i.e., in this context, habitat.
Riace - Territory of possible utopia
It was on the Ionian coast of Calabria, in Riace, that we developed this semester’s projects. In the not-too-distant past, this village was the scene of a remarkable political and human experiment that began with the migration crisis of 2018. With the arrival of groups of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to find a better future in Europe, part of the village mobilized to enable refugees to settle permanently. The refugees will thus enable this village in demographic decline to regain a positive dynamic, and revitalize a set of traditional local practices that had disappeared. This experience, which overturns the dominant narrative of the migratory crisis, has demonstrated that welcoming migrants is beneficial, both for the inhabitants, who saw the revival of activities that had disappeared, and for the migrants, who found a place to start a new life after exile. This political and human context sets the stage for a possible utopia, that of welcoming and building new forms of communities. It is for the hope it offers that we have chosen Riace as the framework for our project: to create spaces to offer migrant communities the possibility of finding a foothold and thus becoming immigrants, that is, being inscribed in space and not kept outside the flow of people and actions, as the philosopher Günther Anders might have written.
Coastal ruins - Inverted ruins
On the strip between the coastal road and the shoreline at Riace Marina, below the historic village of Riace, lies a strikingly beautiful contemporary ruin, known locally as the “eco monstro”. The studio took as its starting point this concrete skeleton abandoned after a bankruptcy. This ruin is that of a future that never happened, a future in ruins before it existed, like a science-fiction tale set in a space-time rift that has reversed and compressed time. For this reason, these concrete structures relate to what American artist Robert Smithson [1938-1973] described as “ruins in reverse” in his 1967 text “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey”. The projects that have taken place here have been an opportunity to build a dialectical relationship around a series of themes that question different community practices and their specificities. Each project explored the cell, its organization and specific qualities, as well as the spaces that produce, gather, organize and distribute common ground. Each group of four students produced a project based on the following themes: care, vacation, study, security, work, refuge and training.
Ferdinando Fuga, rational housing forerunner
Whatever the precise function considered, the question of storing living beings refers, more or less directly, to the question of inhabiting in its broadest sense. The projects were developed within the conceptual territory defined by three emblematic works by 18th-century Neapolitan architect Ferdinando Fuga [1699-1782].
Fuga’s three projects — l’Albergo dei poveri, le Cimitero delle 366 fosse, and il Granili — are for us one of the earliest manifestations of a social ambition for rationalist mass housing and for infrastructures capable of improving the quality of life of the most deprived, a precursor of the 19th and above all 20th century debates on the subject.
The aim here is to cross this disciplinary experience with the political and social experience of Riace, to explore how our own era might also respond to some of its crucial issues - changing lifestyles, the need to rediscover connection, economies of scale and resources to address the wider environmental crisis, the transformation of existing buildings, the relationship between work and private life, etc. — by building alternatives to the individualistic model that is the current norm.
Finally, following a study trip to Naples, a series of buildings reflecting the city’s singular architectural culture was also studied, and the city and its wider territory explored in depth. Paolo Giordano, architect and historian specializing in Fuga, professor at the Dipartimento di Architettura e Disegno Industriale of the Università della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, guided us on our Fuga tours; Lorenzo Giordano, architect and professor at the Dipartimento di Architettura of the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, guided us on our other Neapolitan visits.
Paola Salerno, a photographer who has worked extensively on Calabria and the Riace area, gave a lecture on this — her — territory, its representation and the imaginary she attaches to it.
All the work on the references was carried out by the Master’s students, who shared their knowledge and questions with the Bachelor’s students, who had less weekly project time.