The Seeding Belmondo workshop took place at Casa di Belmondo, in Belmonte Calabro, Calabria in November of 2022, with 10 students from the Turin Polytechnic together with their professors and 11 partners from Italy, Greece and France.
For this first workshop of the Italian cycle, students, professionals and universities were invited to inhabit BelMondo’s Casa spaces, creating a different form of Domestic workplace : il “Cantiere Domestico”.
A vernacular exploration, in search of a balance between technical and social needs, accelerating the relationships between the people who inhabit the Casa to address its potential and future transformations.
The work focused on the discovery of the project of Casa di Belmondo and all its specificities, and on the transformation of the cellar spaces of the Casa, “Le Cantine” into a dynamic laboratory where participants could collect, study and experiment with local and non-local building techniques and materials, temporary reinventing the cellars.
This actions lead also to retrace the process already done on the Casa di BelMondo in recent years by collecting the relationship between the Rivoluzione delle Seppie and the Belmonte Calabro community in a comic strip story “Casa di Belmondo una storia del marmo”.
Pedagogical objectives
This workshop consisted in experiencing la Casa di Belmondo on different scales.
Building the working group and preparing the ground for the next workshop, sowing ideas through direct experience with the spaces of Casa Belmondo, the practices of the collectives and the techniques of the local artisans. Inhabiting the space thus became an experience of collective growth, a search for social, material and cultural textures to highlight needs.
The focus was beyond building something specific, but instead we tested fragments for the rooms in the Cantine to learn how to make elements that could create hybrid places. Places open to respond to various needs based on what was collected from students, locals, and professionals who lived and worked temporarily in the Casa.
The experimental process was also guided by the different people and artisans that were introduced during the week: Franco, a local tiler, Gerardo Vespucci, a local historian..
Educational environments
Co-design and co-production : redesigning an abandoned area of the house into a hybrid space using materials that have been re-used or recovered directly from the dismantling of certain parts of the Casa di Belmondo.
Reflexive Discussions : How to use local materials and construction techniques to develop different areas of the house: the second floor, the kitchen, the canteen, etc.
Participants involved
Students : Francisco Dellacasa, Salvatore Costanzo, Valentina Versaci, Margherita Oberto, Valentina Negro, Martina Garruti, Anastasia Dremlyuga, Lorenzo Fortunato, Yeliz Erinc, Enrico Vercellino.
Partners : La Rivoluzione delle Seppie, Orizzontale, Politecnico di Torino (Ianira Vassallo and Silvia Lantieri), Collectif Etc
Photos credit : Giulia Rosco
