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The project foresees various phases: in an initial “ground works” (April-July), the project partners and coordinators gather for intensive learning experiences and knowledge exchange, encompassing site visits and online meetings to explore the individual practices and their philosophies, discussing the individual approaches further amid the specific case of Bergamo.
Building on these experiences, an on-site educational design-build project will be facilitated around resource-friendly concepts of cohabitation in Bergamo, in the three sites of intervention. This applied laboratory is intended to transfer and apply knowledge, testing practical approaches in the form of an open access Summer School (7th-14th September).
A conclusive phase (October-November) seeks to map and document the prototypes developed in order to see how initiatives of that kind can become permanently embedded in the urban practices – as planted seeds under the snow that will bear harvest for the future.
Calendar May-September:
April - July
“ground works” for So.No, the local communities, partners, mentors, and tutors.
May
Open call for participants
& website launch
Call closes
(participants will be notified by
7th-14th September
Intensive Summer School
(in Bergamo)
Programme (Draft)
7th-14th September
7th-14th September
Sun. 7th Sep.
Arrival and settling in, welcome dinner
Arrival and settling in, welcome dinner
Mon. 8th Sep.
Morning: Grand Tour of Bergamo
(Parco Olmi - Venetian Walls, Orti Sociali Porta San Giacomo - Fruttetto Sass de Luna - back to Parco Olmi)
Afternoon: Collective “seed storming” followed by theme group sessions
Morning: Grand Tour of Bergamo
(Parco Olmi - Venetian Walls, Orti Sociali Porta San Giacomo - Fruttetto Sass de Luna - back to Parco Olmi)
Afternoon: Collective “seed storming” followed by theme group sessions
Tue. 9th Sep.
Wandering construction works
Wandering construction works
Wed. 10th Sep.
Wandering construction works
Wandering construction works
Thu. 11th Sep.
Wandering construction works
Wandering construction works
Fri. 12th Sep.
Wandering construction works
Wandering construction works
Sat. 13th Sep.
Final touch
Closing Wandering Festival
Final touch
Closing Wandering Festival
Sun. 14th Sep.
Reflection and good byes
Reflection and good byes
The project reflects on 5 thematic couples, each addressing a different aspect of “ecology of relations” between people and environment, between our temporary nomadic community and the landscape. The thematic couples touch upon the rituality of natural elements in the context of social interactions, pushing us to re-think the way we build our conviviality and how we manage resources, in a perspective of commoning.
Everyone will also join a specific working team, developing one of the thematic couple together with mentors and tutors, while creating connections with all summer school participants as well as with the species and communities we will be working and living together with, both in action and theory.
Seeds&Community
Familiarizing ourselves with the local terrain and the community we are settling in, all summer school members will be collectively and closely work together in the initial phase of the cohabitation experience, getting to know each other and deciding together on what shall be the commoning values for us, to start forming the seeds for our community.
Soil&Sun
Earth and light occur in the most ancient mythical and spiritual narratives of our history, symbolising the very notion of fauna and flora, and cultivating life on the planet. Being central to any form of earthly population, the contemporary perception and condition around soil (mould, clay, turf, humus, … ) and sun (energy, warmth, light, aridity, …) in the urban context is critical, touching upon aspects such as heat extremes and biodiversity. The working group Soil&Sun will investigate the many implications at Frutteto Sass de Luna.
Tools&Materials
There can be “no commons without community”* ... and there can also be no commoning without specific resources and particularly, the respective tools and materials that communities need to collectively work and organise their shared resources. The studio Tools&Materials will focus on the specific needs and wants of the local communities, trying to think and develop innovative ways for structuring materials and storing tools, allowing for accessibility, maintenance, repairing, and building an active community life inside of Parco Ermanno Colmi.
*Silvia Federici, Re-Enchanting The World, (2018), 110.
Food&Fire
How to nurture an ephemeral community in the urban context? In the team Food&Fire, we try to come up with prototypes that allow us to prepare and process food in the outside. The studio is a space to reflect on archetypical forms of sharing meals as much as an attempt to respond to our contemporary needs and maybe even desire for new rituals around the local urban foodscape. The developed prototypes shall stay with the communities for future activities related to the processing of food ranging from cooking, baking, frying, fermenting to considerations around waste management.
Care&Water
Everyday acts of care are performed in the intimacy of homes, but also in our communal contexts. Yet, many acts around it remain unnoticed – from housekeeping to garbage management – and the actors ever too often are unseen in environments that seeks to hide dirt, waste, broken things. The multifaceted ways of cleaning and cleansing procedures in the context of the summer school are not only a mean of taking care for our ephemeral community, they also draw from feminist actions and theory aimed to work towards empowering actors of care by reclaiming cleaning and maintenance as aesthetic pillars of our society’s functioning.
Mentors are expert practitioners from the field of architecture, carpentry, botany, communication design, geography, and community management.
Mentors will be supported by young tutors, whose role will be of mediation among participants and local actors.
In the preparation phase, mentors, tutors and organizers dialogue with local associations to collect wishes and needs, and start elaborating possible directions to follow during the intensive summer school.
During the intensive summer school week, groups will work with different tools and media to develop the design challenges offered by the themes of the summer school. Mentors will offer their specific expertise while collaborating closely with other local professionals.
(Soil&Sun)
Atelier Remoto is an architecture studio founded in 2019 by Valentina Merz and Lara Monacelli Bani, based between Trento and Bergamo, attracted by what is wandering and unreachable, by distance in space and time, as a mean of rapprochement and re-movement.
Over the years we worked on public competitions, private commissions, exhibitions, temporary installations, academic and personal researches, design workshops, cultural programs, magazines, furnitures and much more, sharing intentions, spaces and knowledge with many professionals, institutions and friends.
www.atelierremoto.com
www.radiolina.org
(Tools&Materials)
Abuse is a design studio with joinery founded in Milan in 2021 by Michele Chillé, Andrea Favalli, Sara Vaccari and Michele Zadra. It deals with product, custom furniture, installations, teaching and research.
We try to think of products and places that are versatile and generous, working with local materials and essential construction techniques. Over the years the studio has collaborated with La Biennale di Venezia, Università della Svizzera Italiana, La Triennale di Milano, NABA, Base Milano, Studio Albori, Atelier Remoto, TUUS, Armature Globale, NM3, Tarantino Marchesi, Zattere, Studio Gisto.
http://abusestudio.it
Iris Lacoudre and Luca Eminenti are architects based in France, between Paris and Morlaix. Their collaboration questions comfort, ways of living and assembling pieces together. With different tools, their approach cares for what is already there, from habits to materials, with an equal attention. They are both teaching, Luca in ENSA Paris Val-de-Seine, and Iris at ENSA Paris-Est and AA Mendrisio.
@iris.lacoudre
www.studiomx.bzh
(Seeds&Community)
Erica Pozzi is a forager and environmental hiking guide. In 2018 she founded “Gli Orsini”, a project dedicated to collecting and training on wild plants: it articulates in collection of wild plants in prealpine meadows and forests in the Orobie Mountains (BG) and training, courses and events. The project also includes
transformation of wild plants in cooking and herbal workshops. In 2020 the project won a Lombardy Region call for projects on sustainability. Erica collaborates with the Bergamo Botanical Garden, she is member of AIF (Italian Association of Phytoalimurgy) and co-founder of the Selvaggio Alpino project. Today she is attending a two-year course to become a mycologist.
(Care&Water)
The non-profit collective “So.No – Società Nomade” in Bergamo (IT) focusses on collective action within urban commons. So.No’s work is dedicated to cultural, social, and creative communities and aims to spark opportunities for them through detecting and activating spaces of and for commoning. They seek to put those in touch who are not connected or failed by systemic structures, empowering people to organize themselves.
For the summer school, So.No’s members Pietro Bailo, Caterina Corte, Giovanni Emilio Galanello, Francesca Gotti, Ernesto Martellaro, and Yona Catrina Schreyer have teamed up to connect the themes, the local communities, mentors, tutors, and participants.
@so.no.societanomade
Paolo Failla studied at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, where he graduated with Arch. Frédéric Bonnet. He has worked in Belgium (BC Architects & Studies), China (Zao/Standard Architecture), and Switzerland (Atelier Amont). Since 2022 he has been working on architecture, landscape and construction projects, collaborating with architects and craftsmen under the name curaa studio. He investigates contemporary spatial forms by searching for archaic and authentic values, bringing architectural thinking into the construction process and making relationships the founding instrument of the project.
https://curaa.studio/
(tutor)
Saskia De Fabritiis is an architect and currently a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning (DAStU) at Politecnico di Milano. In her autonomous practice, she engages in building actions for community design, collective care of public spaces and the regeneration of broken ecosystems. She teaches architectural and landscape design in Mendrisio and Milan.
@saskiadefabritiis