Barma is a pre-Indo-European term indicating a protruding rock. It is a term widespread in toponymy in Catalonia, France, southern Germany and the French and German Switzerland. In the Cottian Alps there are still some inhabited Barma. These settlements do not have a precise dating but are certainly very ancient. In one of them a sacred engraving linked to solar cults, presumably of pre-Indo-European origin, is today partially covered by a Catholic votive pylon. With this photographic series I do not wish to document the housing typologies or make the Alpine landscape nostalgic. I am interested in observing these human settlements for their profound meaning, the relationship between man and natural resources. In our complex contemporaneity, in which the delicate balance between the human species and the natural environment appears to be irremediably compromised, we should return to carefully observing anthropic forms that are so minimally invasive, yet so architecturally in balance with natural resources. They suggest a human standard that is less Promethean and more aware of the most extreme consequences of our presence on Earth. The dimensions of the rocky outcrops are a consequence of geological facts. Unlike flat terrain, they cannot be easily molded into shape or divided responding to individual ownership logics. The comparison with the natural scale of rock formations has forced man to share natural resources and to form a form of collective settlement. Sharing of resources, collective housing, alpine buildings with flat roofs, orthogonal geometry and integration with nature are all examples of a possible degree zero of architecture and urban planning. With this series, after years, I returned to black and white. It's not just the need to work with contrast and luminance to describe the stone. It was first of all an individual necessity. If living means being on earth as mortals, observing this zero degree of inhabit was a liberating experience in a difficult personal moment.