A research laboratory offering a new collective perspective of the territory.
By Giulia Olianas
Winner of the Italiae prize at the last edition of the Asolo Film Festival, the documentary "Eterotopia - La Maddalena", directed by Ivo Pisanti, tells of a meeting built around experimentation and research.
“Eterotopia” is the name of the architecture workshop held in the Maddalena archipelago in 2018 which brought together eight architectural firms and eighty participants, including students from various faculties, researchers, artists, sociologists, architects and other professionals from similar fields in the complex setting of the Sardinian archipelago.
Eterotopias are defined as special, complex spaces. According to the philosopher Michel Foucault, who coined the term, they are spatio-temporal realities in their own right, where it is possible to experience an alternative reality. These are counter-spaces, utopias which exist in reality, as well as places where incompatible spaces coexist.
The Eterotopia architectural collective aims to find such realities on the Italian territory, with the goal of identifying them, studying them and exploring their complexity.
The Maddalena archipelago thus becomes the starting point. It is the perfect embodiment of the concept of heterotopia, as it contains a series of contradictions which characterise not only its landscape but also its essence.
These contradictions can be seen in an area which is both a natural oasis and a destination for mass tourism, a land of shepherds but also an American military base, and finally, the site of a planned G8 summit which was ultimately hosted by the city of Aquila, leaving a legacy of unfinished works, marine pollution and abandoned structures.
Belonging, colonialism, trauma, mobility, time and resistance are some of the themes that were explored during the workshop which involved eight international architectural studios: Enorme Studio, False Mirror Office, Open Fabric, Orizzontale, Parasite 2.0, Something Fantastic, Traumnovelle and Urbz.
Parasite 2.0 Something Fantastic, Traumnovelle e Urbz.
The documentary, which has been selected by prestigious international film festivals such as the Istanbul International Architecture and Urban Film Festival, the Moscow International Design Film Festival, the Milano Design Film Festival and the Visioni Urbane Festival, shows how the final result of this experimental concept goes beyond the creation of projects and proposals for redevelopment and reconversion.
Eterotopia is the connection of places, people, disciplines and points of view. It is the impetus to appreciate what makes a place unique and to respect it through a critical gaze.
Production by Eterotopia
Directed by Ivo Pisanti
Assistant director Fabio Caccuri
Photography Leonardo Annibali
Screenplay by Eterotopia and Collettivo Caleido