One Page Summary

The project aims to introduce sustainable models for development in underdeveloped urban areas of Europe, starting from Palermo which, like many other cities, has an incredible potential and major social issues. We aim to create a network of associations and enterprises from the point of arrival of migrants to their desired destinations, a platform for the most skilled and enterprising to migrate and produce value in a syncretic society.
We are restoring a former industrial pavilion in Palermo which will function as convivial space and hub for researching, archiving and developing traditional crafts with the aid of digital manufacture.

Through a platform that allows migrants and other marginalized communities (including unschooled local people who cannot access basic services) to interact and learn a profession, we aim to empower them, valorizing their knowledge in a reframed context. We call this framework “counter-colonial” aesthetics, a term that outlines those practices that can express the potential and dignity of territories which have been exploited or kept poor until now.
It is a space conceived for professional exchange between locals and foreigners, composed by different material laboratories (carpentry, ceramic, digital manufacture), a restaurant/bar serving ethnic food with local produce, an archive of migrant’s culture, and a large exhibition space for gathering vernacular knowledge. This way craftsmen and migrants techniques and knowledge can be catalogued and spread.
The productions of the workshops are the result of co-design and participatory processes among designers, migrants and locals: the long-term goal is to professionalize and create autonomous spin-off enterprises. We support entrepreneurial attitudes in disadvantaged categories of population, leaning toward ecological innovation, agricultural enterprise, digital manufacture and bio-architecture;
We preserve and experiment skills and techniques related to natural materials through a research centre and an archive. Natural material and their use are not only one of the common background of many migrants and a fundamental trait of European heritage but are also the future frontier for architectural and industrial productions.
Human migrations and the material culture which is brought with them are powerful access points to alternative integration paths. By using common ground between heritages of local crafts heritage and other cultures, manufacture becomes an engine for the development of disadvantaged social realities. We research the linking point between European tradition and the Asian, Arab, and African worlds, and based on the selection of key materials or techniques, we find craftsman and migrants able to work together on hybrid productions.
In collaboration with designers and cultural studies institutions, we articulate methodologies for the integration and involvement of the incredible heritage and potential that lies in marginalized communities.