Manualetto
Manualetto represents a tangible example of how Architecture can transform the city, involving the community and addressing urban challenges with a practical, immediate, open and participatory approach.
In addition to engaging the public at the pavilion, countless donors, sponsors, artists, thinkers were involved. In this way, Manualetto has shown that it continues to grow and evolve, living proof of how Architecture can not only be a powerful tool for urban change as a social and cultural focus, but also a great attractor of completely different people, with unique and personal goals, practising the most diverse jobs, of different ages and sexes, if not always opposites... in essence, in a word, “citizenship”.
After the success of the pilot edition, held for one week in September 2022, this year's intervention included the creation of a new temporary aggregative space near the Ex Consorzio Agrario, in the dock area of the city of Ravenna, activated with theatrical performances, concerts, dj sets, and other initiatives, always free and open to all kinds of audiences, curated in the set by the Ravenna-based under-35 studio, DENARA, and the multidisciplinary collective Studio Doiz, which this year also decided to involve their colleagues from marte aps in the initiative.
A large 6-metre high pavilion, formed by industrial scaffolding encircling an OSB wooden platform on three sides, hosts a rich programme of music, theatre and art for nine evenings over three weekends, from 22 September to 8 October 2023. Right underneath the abandoned factories, a 'temporary village' comes to life, where one can drink, eat and enjoy free cultural programming with a specific focus on artists under 35. Thus, this former industrial area on the outskirts of the city, a true uniqueness of the Romagna landscape, is once again illuminated and living a life of its own.
Turning our gaze no longer towards the water of the dock as in the pilot edition, but towards the industrial remains, it was decided to focus attention on them, seeking to enhance their architectural appearance as much as their state of abandonment. In correspondence with the large silos of the former Consorzio Agrario di Ravenna, a syntactic dialogue was established between the ephemeral and the historical, and so the new pavilion was inserted into the context as an abandoned scaffolding framework, an echo of the surrounding rusty steel structures.
The project once again had the ambition of triggering from below a system of social and cultural relations that would favour the repetition of the Manualetto experience as an itinerant and participatory process, extendable at regular intervals also to other 'common-good places' within the province of Ravenna. Only through the direct involvement of strong local partners who sponsor the event, and of the citizens themselves, is it possible to mend the rift between public space and citizenship, precisely in the areas where it has gradually become distant over the decades.
