These are, for example, communities that have voluntarily withdrawn (or, at times, been exiled) from urban contexts; or artists run spaces, collectives of workers, alternative educational centres that experiment new forms of collective learning and mutualism, putting forward alternative modes of managing labour and resources.
The second chapter of CASE, the Public Program of We Will Design 2024, will present a series of case studies representative of various communities that are actively trying to row against the current, proposing new visions for the management of commons and urban practices.
The case studies, with a focus on Europe, will be illustrated by Rosario Talevi, architect, publisher, curator and educator specialised in transformative pedagogies, co-founder of the floating research laboratory Floating University of Berlin; in conversation with the collective forty five degrees (Berta Gutierrez and Alkistis Thomidou), that for years has been committed to identifying case studies that testify to the existence of alternative communities along the 45th parallel north in Europe, the border that conventionally divides Southern Europe from Northern Europe.
* CASE is the name of the Public Program focused on the themes of co-existence and co-housing, at BASE Milano from January to March 2024. Three appointments, three fanzines, international guests, unpublished contributions, installations that create opportunities for critical discussion and dialogue. A conversation curated by Erica Petrillo, curator-in-residency at BASE, who gives voice to We Will Design and who will accompany us until Design Week 2024.
Bio
forty five degrees is an international collaborative practice of architects and researchers composed by professionals hailing from Greece, Italy, Germany, France, and Spain, transcending geographical boundaries and expanding its international networks to embrace the diversity of culture legacies. In our work, we are committed to the critical revisioning of space-making, exploring new methods, resources and means. With a focus on a comprehensive exploration of the built environment, our practice employs research, design, writing and artistic experimentation to analyze its physical, social, and economic entanglements. We are inspired by the ingenuity of everyday life and particularly keen on gahtering methodologies and cooperative strategies, venturing into alternative spatial models.
Rosario Talevi (Buenos Aires, 1983) is a Berlin-based architect, curator, editor and educator interested in critical spatial practice (Rendell), transformative pedagogies and feminist futures. A graduate of the School of Architecture, Design & Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires. She has held teaching and research positions in Berlin (UdK, TUB) and at the University of Buenos Aires (FADU/UBA). She was Guest Professor of Social Design (2021-22) at HFBK in Hamburg. Currently, she is teaching at the Free University in Bolzano, Italy. Since 2014, Rosario’s interdisciplinary practice has manifested through the work of diverse groups such as Floating University (since 2018), Soft Agency (2017-2023), raumlabor berlin (active 2016-2021), or via projects such as Make City (2014-2018), Making Futures (2018-2020), Climate Care (2019-2023) and Village as Ecological Entity (since 2023). In 2022, Rosario was a fellow at the Thomas Mann Haus in Los Angeles, California. Single mother of Florentina Talevi (born 2003).