“Since I was a child, I have been bothered by, let’s call it, the irrational, and have been trying to find an order behind what is given to us as a disorder.”
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning, Taylor & Francis, London 2005, p. 3.

The project Calcestruzzo (2020-ongoing, 2022) is comprised of photographs, performances, sculptures, cards, newspapers, and books, which investigate the theme of overbuilding in the Italian landscape. The archive of the series is inexhaustible, it grows due to the accumulation of materials found, donated, and purchased by accessing the most popular digital portal: eBay, comparable to la réderie, a marketplace of passing time, of the residues of history that we place there.
The project Calcestruzzo relates the history of the first "Construction Boom" to current events with the aim of minimizing soil sealing by 2050 (EU).

An impending demise
The incessant use of land is a phenomenon that affects the entire national territory. The overbuilding of the 1960s, in full "Construction Boom", is an event that has damaged the future of mankind. In 1951, 10.7 million houses were built, which almost doubled by 1991, reaching 19.7 million units, according to data released by Censis (Social Investments Study Center).
Soil consumption erodes the coasts in particular: 52.6% of the 3,902 kilometers of coastline have been subjected to overbuilding. Since the mid-1980s, concrete has taken away approximately 220 kilometers of the Italian coastline. In 2020, during the lockdown period, despite the suspension of most of the activities, the territory lost another 60 sq km, (Ispra. Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, report on land use in Italy, 2021 edition).
Each individual person today corresponds to approximately 360 sq m of concrete in Italy (160 sq m in the 1950s). Land use has now eroded 23,039 sq km of the country. This means that about a fourteenth of the territory is covered, which prevents the soil from breathing and water from being absorbed. The uninterrupted expansion of suburbs, the road network, and infrastructure have created an artificial covering that prevents exchange between the elements of nature.
The Calcestruzzo project, organised in a taxonomic and rational way, focuses on the history and relevance of the transformation of the Italian landscape and society. The composition of the photographic material aims to provoke a reflection on the ungrammaticality of a country constantly on the edge of hydrogeological risk.