Calling Home
Venice Biennale [IT]
2014
graphic design and drawings
a project by F. De Pieri, F. Zanfi
Calling Home is a project on the changes of the home in Italy and on the ways in which Italian society shapes its domestic spaces. The project ideally looks at the great post-war investigations into the housing conditions of the country, from La casa in Italia by Liliana Cavani (1964-65) to Dentro le case by Gianni Berengo Gardin and Luciano D'Alessandro (1978), and focuses mainly on the residential heritage built in those same years, i.e. in a period of great expansion of Italian cities and access for many to home ownership.
In a series of 20 video interviews, shown live, the interviewees, connected from their homes, talk about the spaces around them and their present and past experience of the building. Each interview covers some recurring themes, related to furnishings and distribution, forms of use and ownership, daily experiences, personal and collective memories related to the place. The sample of interviewees is representative of a plurality of housing situations in various Italian regions and observes the ongoing social transformations from a spatial perspective.
Calling Home will took part in the Weekend Specials section of Monditalia at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, from September to November 2014.
Calling Home is an initiative organized as part of the research project "Architecture for the middle classes in booming Italy".
Calling Home is a project on housing change in Italy and in the ways Italian society shapes its domestic spaces. It ideally turns back to some of the grand inquiries that were dedicated to Italy's housing during the decades of dramatic urban transformation that followed WWII, such as Liliana Cavani's La casa in Italia(1964-65), or Gianni Berengo Gardin and Luciano D'Alessandro's Inside the houses (1978). It mostly focuses on the housing stock that was built during the same period, when many Italians achieved the status of homeowners.
The project consists in a series of 20 live video-interviews in which the interviewees are connected from their homes and are asked to talk about the spaces around them and their past and present experience of the building. Each interview covers a few recurrent topics related to house arrangements, accommodation and tenure, daily life experiences and the personal and collective memories attached to the place. The sample of interviewees represents a plurality of living situations from several Italian regions and addresses from a spatial perspective the social transformations underway.
Calling Home has contributed to the section Weekend Specials of Monditalia at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, from September to November 2014.
Calling Home is an initiative organized within the research project “Architectures for the middle class in Italy 1950s-1970s”.
