Jessica Ho Y5
The Serafini Convivium
How can prefigurative place identity and commoning practices around food reconstruct the material and social conditions for inhabited stewardship in rural Northern Italy?
In the heart of Northern Italy’s Po River, Isola Serafini serves as a test bed for reinhabiting the Po Valley through ecological repair and local gastronomic identity, exploring legacies of post-industrial agriculture commons. Besieged by rural depopulation and biotope erosion from industrial monocultures, the territory increasingly oscillates between catastrophic flooding and drought.
The Serafini Convivium speculates a rural revival enacted through food, envisioning a neo-peasantry commons. The Convivium’s spatial logic mimics the synergies of a layered forest garden, terracing production. The architecture establishes a nuanced site where ecological complexity and sustenance are intrinsically bound.
