The Castellina design team, which takes its name from the location of the workshop, Castellina Square (Ferrara, Italy), mounts a critical urban action called “Tu abiti?” (literally, “Do you live in?”): an artistic installation shows in the empty parking courtyard, what is usually hidden, our own clothes. Clothes represent our own identity and our private life but they also remind us the iconography of the working-class neighborhood. Some Venetian inner courtyard and many quarters of the southern Italy paint the urban scene with the bright colors of t-shirts and pants: due to the lack of space inside the housing or allowed by the good climate which helps drying them, this common custom reveals the possibility to interact in a buffer-zone called collective space or semi-public space.

With the purpose to recover one of the entry door of the city, we asked the inhabitants participation and their help to re-shape the facades of the courtyard which windows don’t open up anymore.

 

The “Tu abiti?” urban action was performed in September 2010, within the workshop “Alias - urban practices in the marginal spaces of the city” promoted by the association Rigenerazione urbana with the supervision of the architect team Ecosistema Urbano (Madrid), the architect Francesco Careri (Stalker On/Osservatorio Nomade, Rome) and the artist Ivan Tresoldi (Art kitchen, Milan).

Five focus –spaces were selected through a photography competition called “Collective visions”: later, five groups formed by students analyzed potentialities and talents of those places, using art and public design as tools for involving citizens in the planning and designing process.

 

"Collective visions" photography competition on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/51103541@N04/sets/72157630730189796/