Flow

Marea presents Being with-in: The Live Project in Praiano with the Royal College of Art

March 4, 2024 by info@mareartproject.com

From 24 February to 2 March 2024, the tide will bring the Architectural Design Studio 7 (ADS7) students of the Royal College of Art in London to the Amalfi Coast to work together on the project Being with-in: The Live Project in Praiano.

Together, we will explore the territory of Praiano through the action of walking and observing, understood as a synthetic form of active art, a primordial tool for knowledge, understanding, and transformation of the territory. We will collect films and record sounds, architecture, and landscape pieces, but above all, we will build moments of convivial exchange between the students and the inhabitants of Praiano. We will show how some places that risk being lost, suspended between the contradictions of the winter and summer seasons, should instead be valorized as resourcescapes - rich in authentic materials, relationships, and stimuli.
Credit: Archivio Scala - Marina di Praia
The ADS7 research will allow us to cross paths with people who represent the historical memory, as well as the contemporaneity, of these places. We will re-imagine the territory, putting its needs and desires at the center and the conflicts of those who live there, broadening our gaze and making our breath regenerative. We will celebrate the practice of walking, observation, and listening as a form of resistance to the loss of identity and collective memory to which places such as the coast are destined, crushed by seasonal and mass tourism.

The project will be coordinated by Sabrina Morreale and Lorenzo Perri, architects, teachers, and founders of Lemonot, among the nine architecture studios selected for the Italian Pavilion of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia 2023. The mapping and design laboratory participated in Praiano will start from the concept of conviviality as a tool for physical, emotional, and political reconnection - as a form of gentle resistance and spatial activism.

Il progetto sarà coordinato da Sabrina Morreale e Lorenzo Perri, architetti, docenti e fondatori di Lemonot, tra i nove studi di architettura selezionati per il Padiglione Italia della 18. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura – La Biennale di Venezia 2023. Il laboratorio di mappatura e progettazione partecipata a Praiano partirà dal concetto della convivialità come strumento di riconnessione fisica, emozionale e politica – come forma di resistenza gentile e di spatial activism.

Lemonot is a duo that combines spatial and relational practices, floating between London and Italy. Sabrina and Lorenzo mainly deal with public space: they operate between architecture and performing arts - understood as devices to arouse, trigger, and celebrate the forms of theatricality inherent in everyday life.

«As architects, we are interested in learning from places that change, regenerating themselves, re-establishing genuine contact between behaviors, rituals, and local resources. Like the entire Amalfi Coast, Praiano suddenly seems isolated during the winter when commercial activities and tourist facilities are closed. But the temporary detachment frees the territory from all its superstructures, helping these places to rediscover their identity, rebuilding new community dimensions."

Credit: Lemonot
During the research on the Amalfi coast, the ADS7 will investigate the territory of Praiano through three routes that lead to Cala La Gavitella, Marina La Praia, and the Convent of San Domenico:

«We will start from these three "walkscapes" and the multiple actors that define them to design a series of immersive portraits of the territory.

We will be sensitive observers, delicately listening to their memories, desires, and fears. We will question these peculiar places, where the sense of belonging becomes tangible - highlighting how the emptiness only apparently gives life to profound and sometimes forgotten convivial dynamics".
Being with-in: The Live Project in Praiano is made possible thanks to the support of The LeWitt Collection, Hotel Poseidon Positano, Il San Pietro di Positano, Hotel Margherita – Amalfi Coast, Hotel Pupetto, Ristorante Da Armandino Praiano, Hotel Tramonto d’Oro, Villa Corallium – Praiano, Masaniello Art Cafè, Ceramiche Casola, La Taverna del Leone, Casa Erato, Masa Villas – Your Private Villa Experience.