Germinale: a greenhouse to cultivate new generations
'Germinale' is an urban regeneration project for the underserved neighbourhood Le Piagge in the outskirt of Florence. Inspired by the famous Emile Zola novel dedicated to the redemption of the poorest , the new building is a former vandalised greenhouse, self-rebuilt and transformed into a house for the arts. It is a space for the new generations who can't find a "home" in the city and a way of escaping marginality expanding the access to culture and beauty where you wouldn't expect to find.
Local
Italy
{Empty}
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-10-31
As individual(s) in partnership with organisation(s)
First name: Elena Last name: Barthel Gender: Female Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: Le Piagge Base Community, founded in 1994 by a priest in a peripheral and deprived neighbourhood of Florence, is an open and plural experience that seeks to rebuild links between inhabitants of all ages, social classes, ethnic and religion, with the ultimate goal to include and support all the weakest and marginalised social groups. The areas of intervention are those of social, educational and cultural work, socio-employment integration, rights, critical consumption, environmental sustainability. To carry out its project of transformation of the neighbourhood, the Community has given life to numerous associations and cooperatives, configuring itself as an intertwined network of experiences that have made the Piagge an active and lively place of cultural production, connected to numerous national and international networks, despite the extreme deprivation of the context. Nationality: Italy Function: Project coordinator Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via Volterrana n.103 Town: Florence Postal code: 50125 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 335 571 1786 E-mail:barthellelenaa@gmail.com
First name: Anna Lisa Last name: Pecoriello Gender: Female Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: Le Piagge Base Community, founded in 1994 by a priest in a peripheral and deprived neighbourhood of Florence, is an open and plural experience that seeks to rebuild links between inhabitants of all ages, social classes, ethnic and religion, with the ultimate goal to include and support all the weakest and marginalised social groups. The areas of intervention are those of social, educational and cultural work, socio-employment integration, rights, critical consumption, environmental sustainability. To carry out its project of transformation of the neighbourhood, the Community has given life to numerous associations and cooperatives, configuring itself as an intertwined network of experiences that have made the Piagge an active and lively place of cultural production, connected to numerous national and international networks, despite the extreme deprivation of the context. Nationality: Italy Function: project coordinator Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Viale Corsica 60 Town: Firenze Postal code: 50127 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 348 800 8359 E-mail:alisa.pecoriello@gmail.com
First name: Alessandro Last name: Santoro Gender: Male Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: Le Piagge Base Community, founded in 1994 by a priest in a peripheral and deprived neighbourhood of Florence, is an open and plural experience that seeks to rebuild links between inhabitants of all ages, social classes, ethnic and religion, with the ultimate goal to include and support all the weakest and marginalised social groups. The areas of intervention are those of social, educational and cultural work, socio-employment integration, rights, critical consumption, environmental sustainability. To carry out its project of transformation of the neighbourhood, the Community has given life to numerous associations and cooperatives, configuring itself as an intertwined network of experiences that have made the Piagge an active and lively place of cultural production, connected to numerous national and international networks, despite the extreme deprivation of the context. Nationality: Italy Function: Legal rapresentative of Le Piagge base community Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Piazza Ilaria Alpi e Miran Hrovatin 2 Town: Firenze Postal code: 50145 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 055 373737 E-mail:ilmuretto@libero.it Website:https://www.comunitadellepiagge.it/
Germinale is an urban regeneration project realized in Le Piagge neighbourhood, at the periphery of Florence. Inspired by the famous Emile Zola novel dedicated to the redemption of the poorest classes, the building is a former greenhouse destroyed by vandalism, self-rebuilt and transformed into a community space for the arts. It is part of a multiphase, incremental process of self-production of public space as a commons, carried on by Le Piagge Base Community, an open and plural experience that seeks to rebuild links between inhabitants of all ages, social classes, ethnicity and religion, with the ultimate goal to include and empower the marginalised social groups. The process started in 2018 with the project Apriti piazza! (financed by the Tuscany Region Authority for Participation) for the participatory planning of Piazza Alpi/Hrovatin, a large area surrounding the Community’s buildings, followed by the project Tazebao (financed by the Creative Living Lab prize of the Italian Ministry of Culture) and continued with Germinale, winner of the same prize in the following edition.
The abandoned greenhouse’s new life gave to the Piazza an open multifunctional and inclusive space of self-expression for the new generations. The renovation process, carried out with participatory planning and sustainable self-construction methods, involving community volunteers, architecture students, former prisoners and undocumented migrants in socio-labour reinsertion paths of Il Cerro cooperative, working side by side with experts and craftsmen, created an informal but effective learning environment. At the same time, social animation actions and creative workshops took place, in partnership with the local school, the theatre company Le Rotte Sedie, the local artist group Il Prisma and the prestigious art printing Foundation Il Bisonte, stimulating further contaminations, creation of new relationships, new audience for contemporary art and a deep sense of belonging to the place.
Urban regeneration
Community building
Co-design & Self-construction
Art for all
Empowerment & social inclusion
Germinale is an integral recovery project and in this sense profoundly sustainable from both an environmental, economic and social point of view. It returns an unused resource to the community with a valuable socio-educational process. Applying the principles of circular and solidarity economy, the process included people in different life conditions through an approach that mixes training and socio-labour reintegration, voluntary and paid work, creative forms of self-financing as well as public funding resources and various forms of collaboration within the territory. The limited financial resources coming from the Creative Living Lab prize were optimized recycling many construction materials as: the former greenhouse tunnel steal structure, the fabric and panels from a fashion show, old outdoor refurbished furniture, wooden planks rescued from a Parmesan factory and even an old printing press donated by a local pharmacist! The renewed greenhouse not only is a beautiful home for the arts but also a zero-emission building. The environmental sustainability is guaranteed by passive and active architectural strategies to reduce the energy consumption. While the transparent roof allows the space to be naturally light in daytime, a solar panel produces the energy to run the building during the night hours with a natural resource. In the summer, a green shading device protects the envelope from excessive solar radiation, while in the winter the cotton curtains protect the interior space from heating loose. In search of the building longevity, all the technologies and materials utilised in the renovation are low tech and low maintenance, to rely both the construction and the repair processes on limited economical resources, while guaranteeing the self-construction experience to be accessible to everyone. The long-term sustainability of the project in any sense is guaranteed by the rigorous ethical approach of the Community and its long experience of self-organization.
With the support of expert, teachers, craftsmen and architecture students, Germinale future users have been involved in the creative process of “design & build” since the beginning through co-design sessions and on-site visits followed by collective reviews. Germinale participatory design process has been based on utilitarian materials, circular economy, appropriate technologies and an architectural language easy to understand, characterized by a feeling of permanence and durability. Also, the building aesthetics and functionality were agreed with participants, that didn’t want the original “agricultural” character of the building to be lost. The front façade was chorally designed as a transparent wall with, in the centre, a large folding door to celebrate the life flow from the neighborhood into the building and vice versus. Two blackboards were designed to separate the multifunctional space from the storage rooms as recording surfaces and privileged witnesses of the community’s thoughts during collective discussions. A long conversation was held on security issues, due to the high risk of vandalism and theft in the area, but at the end it was decided to keep a low security profile, continuing to trust people, in the belief that beauty leads to respect.
Germinale is a multifunctional space that allows activities to take place and grow, with a maximum inclusivity for all ages, genders and cultures.
Three elements allow its adaptability to all occasions:
- the translucent outer envelope, made with polycarbonate panels attached to the original hoop house structure, creates a continuous long room that can be easily occupied by exhibits, performances, projections and workshops;
- the walking surface, made with a plane wooden platform, makes the space worm and professional welcoming standing up and laying down activities;
- a front porch, nestled into the surrounding garden, gives to the building an extra room allowing overlapping calendars.
With the opening of the new Germinale space, together with the networks created and the activities promoted during the participatory process, the project has undoubtedly favored the inclusiveness and accessibility of the artistic-cultural offer in Le Piagge district, expanding the spectrum of actions that many institutions already carry out in the socio-educational and recreational fields, regarding of self-expression through art.
The utilized regeneration methods (participatory planning and self-construction ) have served to increase and revitalize intergenerational and intercultural exchanges thanks to the "working together" between people of different ages and different origins as for example the workers of Il Cerro cooperative, in socio-labor reintegration paths, architecture students, school kids and teenagers from the theater company Le Rotte sedie, who worked side by side with experts of various disciplines.
Two choices increased the usability and quality of the spaces, guaranteeing accessibility to all:
- the free access for the participants to all the initiatives (activating fundraising only from institutions ethically compatible with the principles of the Community or self-financing initiatives)
- the establishment of the “Germinale self-management open committee” in witch all the activities of Le Piagge Community (education, culture, community theatre, job insertion, well-being practices and more, already opened to everyone) are represented together with ‘Il Prisma’ art collective and the local school teachers.
The seminar with the University of Florence architecture students and the engraving workshop with the art collective Il Prisma, together with Il Bisonte printing Foundation, have created a temporary art community integrated with the local community with interesting effects of contamination, as the results of which are visible in the ‘Segno Periferico’ catalogue. (See attachment)
The involvement and empowerment of the project’s recipients is one of the central themes that led to create Germinale as a place for the arts with a radical participative approach.
The process started with the involvement of different branches of Le Piagge Community, starting with the teenagers group who dropped out of school and out of job opportunities, the so-called ‘neet’, that gave birth to the theatre company Le Rotte Sedie, applying the methodology of the Theatre of Oppressed. Their experience successfully proved the strength of art as a way to escape a predetermined fate of marginalization. The collaboration with them was the opportunity to bring this theme into a peer to peer exchange with the local school kids.
The process continued with the involvement of all the potential users in the co-design of the new space until the self-building site was opened and shared with the Il Cerro cooperative workers, the community volunteers and many other people who came to lend a hand. The opening of the engrave art workshop was another key tool of inclusion from witch benefited local inhabitants as well as artists of the underground and more traditional Florentine scene, with stunning effects of contamination.
The communication strategies used for Germinale are the same experimented in the previous projects for Piazza Alpi/Hrovatin that led to the creation of a new façade for the community social center: a speaking wall, opened to the neighborhood. Every initiative since then is communicated through the Tazebao wall. Local alternative press and social media have been added, but only the new façade overcame the digital divide widespread in a deprived context as Le Piagge.
Public events were the occasion to involve a larger audience, thanks to the wide network of collaborations built by the project and over time by the Community, giving Germinale the possibility of becoming a space open to the city, away from a ghetto.
Le Piagge Base Community is a complex mix of realities developed over the last 30 years including: a cultural association Il Muretto, three social cooperatives (Il Cerro for socio-labour reintegration, Il Pozzo for educational work and Equazione that deals with solidarity economy), an experience of microcredit (the Ethical and social fund) and a mutual financial self-management cooperative (MAG Firenze), plus other formal and informal groups. All these activities where interconnected with Germinale project, that is inserted in the same spatial and Community temporal routine with witch shares the same rigorous ethical approach.
In the creation of Germinale a fundamental role played the Creative living lab prize by Italian Minister of Culture and the financial and moral support of MAG-Firenze (that provided a loan to avoid the recourse to banks). There have been no direct involvements of other stakeholders at a supra-local level but it must be emphasized that the local, national and international networks with which the Le Piagge Community is in contact are numerous. From Latin America cultural experiences of the Liberation theology, to the theatre of the Oppressed European companies based in similar marginalized, up to international networks focused on migration and welcoming policies, peace and solidarity economy and common goods (of which Le Piagge community recently hosted the European legal table meeting, during the European Social Forum 20th anniversary.
Among these we underline the importance of those created and strengthened with Germinale, first of all the collaboration with the University of Florence, School of Architecture, Il Prisma artists collective, Il Bisonte printing Foundation and the Gandhi Comprehensive School. Many references to the best-known international experiences in the field of community design & self-building practices come from the experience of Rural studio with which one of the project coordinators collaborated for a long time.
Different integrated disciplinary approaches have been used, thanks to the different skills of the project’s team which sees the collaboration between architects and urban planners (with experience in managing participatory projects, urban regeneration, teaching and self-construction), students, craftsmen, artists, educators, environmentalists and teachers of various disciplines.
The exchanges that took place during the co-design and self-building process and the organization of the cultural events (workshops, exhibitions, theatre performances…) allowed the acquisition of many new multidisciplinary skills and knowledges, mixing theater and architecture, urban planning and history, art and sociality. Germinale constitutes an enabling environment in the creative and cultural sphere as its management is open to anyone who wants to contribute and propose initiatives.
For example some working day of the architecture students seminar were preceded by warming up exercises with the technique of TdO in order to strengthen the participants cohesion, while exploring and imagining the space. The same techniques were utilized in the local school workshops where the young students met the Le Rotte sedie company in a process of peer to peer education. The school kids were guided by architects and a naturalistic guide to discover their neighborhood; the architecture students were supported by expert teachers, tutors and craftsman, side by side with the people in socio-labor reinsertion pathways; as well as professional artists worked side by side with people at their first experience in the engraving workshop. The added value is the creation of a true sense of community and social cohesion, minimizing social differences, erased the differences between high and low culture.
An impressive amount of activities took place from march 2022 to today:
• The co-design and self-building process (11 students, 2 teachers, 2 tutors, 2 project coordinators, 2 workers in socio-labour reinsertion, 100 volunteers).
• Tours of the Piagge neighborhood with the local school (200 alumnus, 12 teachers)
• The Theatre of the Oppressed workshop at the local school (more than 70 alumnus).
• A co-design workshop for the Tazebao graphics.
• Le rotte sedie performance, attended by a large audience during Germinale opening (200 participants).
• The engrave workshop ‘Segno Periferico’(10 participants) and the exhibition (200 participants).
• A weekly yoga course for the residents.
• A Theatre of the Oppressed course for adults (11 participants).
• An international meeting about The Commons with researchers from international universities.
• Children educational activities.
• Monthly convivial events as craft markets and book discussions.
The impact of Germinale multifunctional space in the neighbourhood regards several aspects:
- The increased capacity to affect reality, demonstrated by the flourishing of many initiatives promoted by the artist collective ‘ilPrisma’ and by the local school with an unprecedented form of school-territory integration.
- The new learning environment chance to give trainers, students and people in socio-labour reintegration, chance to acquire knowledge and skills while experimenting an ethical approach to their professions.
- The emancipation of Le Piagge neighborhood from a peripheral condition boosted by the free access to everyone to quality experience regardless of one's social condition: an important step towards social cohesion and justice, environmental sustainability, empowerment of the population’s marginalized segments.
- The aggregation of communities of artists and non-artists, people of all ages and different backgrounds, overcame cultural barriers and the risk of isolation.
We believe the exemplary nature of the project lies in this: Germinale was born and developed through a real participatory process in a context of profound integration of artistic, cultural and social work in the daily life of a community that resides and works in the neighborhood and does not bring an occasional intervention, external, detached from reality.
The urban regeneration project started with Apriti Piazza! and continued with Tazebao, and Germinale, follows an incremental logic of participation and self-sustainability that represents an innovative approach to the redevelopment of public space from below.
Moreover, extending the design process to self-construction means extending the designer's awareness to the entire creative process. From the conceptual to the schematic phase, from the executive project to the study of the construction details up to the construction site, from the choice of materials to the manufacturing. If this process becomes an opportunity to carry out an urban regeneration project with the direct involvement of users, the project becomes circular and complete in all its parts. The responsibilities of the designer therefore become multiple: the ability to imagine beauty by balancing forms and functions is added to the ability to guarantee its durability. In addition to the ability to imagine a project suited to the users' needs, there is the ability to calibrate it on the material and social resources put in place. To the rigor of the design is added that of the construction.
The methodologies that were used during the participatory planning of Germinale were designed to allow non-experts to imagine transformations and to represent them with simple means (walks, mapping, maquette, photo, rendering, charrette, physical interaction with space… ).
At these activities were added education and participatory art activities that used different approaches and methodologies:
- the theatre of the oppressed, invented by Augusto Boal in the 60s, that uses the language of the theater as a means of knowledge and transformation of inner, relational and social reality, activates the public and serves groups of "spect-actors" to explore, stage, analyze and transform reality.
- The engraves workshop led by a master of ‘Il Bisonte’ art school for artists and common people without distinction and the final exhibition held in the Germinale space and in the surrounding streets, to involve also people that don’t have contacts with art circuits.
- Le Piagge tour with students of the local school discovering art, history and environment of the neighborhood, ended in the Germinale space.
- The graphics and the content announcing the Germinale on the community social center façade Tazebao were designed collectively.
Conviviality was another fundamental approach that characterized all the course of the process (sharing food, music and having fun together).
To these techniques of involvement was added the direct transformation of the greenhouse with the design and build seminar in collaboration with the University School of Architecture. Students, in collaboration with people in socio-labor reintegration paths and volunteers designed and constructed the new space from the foundation to the interior finishing widening their academic experience. The proposed methodologies refer to well-established approaches (co-design, tactical urbanism, place making), and to experiences that have also made school in international contexts such as that of Rural Studio.
The activation of Germinale as a multifunctional space envisages a low-cost, socially sustainable, open and free space model easily achievable and reproducible.
The design and build seminar with the students and teachers of the Architecture Department of the University of Florence is another key element that can be replicated or transferred to other places, changing profoundly the way architecture is conceived and taught in the Academia. The seminar was designed to rise the students’ awareness of the necessary techniques for carrying out both the design and the construction process according to the principles that define the figure of the Japanese craftsman Shokunin. The Shokunin must not only develop technical skills, but also a social attitude and conscience. He has a civil obligation to do his best work for the general welfare of the people. This obligation is both spiritual and material.
Many other aspects of the Germinale multifunctional space are replicable highlights:
- The involvement of people in socio-labour reinsertion paths in the self-building site, that accelerates the acquisition of skills and social inclusion in a highly collaborative environment strengthening self-esteem;
- The mixed competences and approaches, the strengthening of territorial networks with different subject active in the neighbourhood to start empowerment processes, without relying only on institutional intervention. This has been ‘Le Piagge’ Community approach since its foundation and is the basis on which the participatory process lead into the Germinale project.
Some of the most crucial global challenges are part of the everyday work of Le Piagge community, in wich Germinale project is inserted with it’s own contributions:
- The climate change and energy issue have been addressed through a sustainable approach to building based on circular economy and zero emission.
- Social cohesion and social inclusion have been addressed experiencing a sense of belonging in the local context and in everyday life through a network of proximity relationships. The creation of job and learning opportunities for people at risk of marginality contributed to reducing the gap between rich and poor. Moreover, dropping out and crisis of young generations have been addressed opening opportunities of self-expression through the languages of art, creating also a new audience for contemporary art bringing it outside of the consolidated, central and affluent circuits.
- the centrality of education and learning in formal and informal contexts, addressed making accessible art and culture for all, with high quality experiences and methodologies, and making Germinale self-building site a learning environment for students but also an effective and innovative part of socio-labour reinsertion paths for Il Cerro cooperative workers.
- Democratization is another challenge for the future. In many countries there is stil totalitarism but in the western world our democracy is in crisis: people don’t trust politics, don’t vote, don’t participate… Germinale has been a way to raise awareness and to empower people in order to better participate to public life.
Solidal economy is the last challenge addressed, following the rigorous principles of Le Piagge community, creating alternatives to the economic system based on injustice and exploitation. The collaboration with MAG, the choice made on fundraising (excluding banks and other “not ethical” sponsor), the mix of voluntary and paid work, following the needs of everybody, are some examples.
