A full day of appointments inviting professional architects, urban planners and other innovative land practitioners to reflect together on an abandoned industrial site with great potential.
The Municipality of Palermo, in collaboration with the Agenzia del Demanio (State Property Agency), has promoted a redevelopment operation of the Ex Chimica Arenella complex, in the district of the same name, through the C40 reinventing cities platform, an initiative created to stimulate urban regeneration operations through a competition that rewards both the business and architectural dimensions of the project.
The Ex Chimica Arenella is a strategic site for the urban regeneration of Palermo because of its size, its strategic location on the sea, the architectural quality of the buildings and their industrial history, but also because of its social role in an area as complex as the Arenella seaside village.
Palermo, stimulating further reflection and public debate on the project.
Resuming the format of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Serpentine marathons, :AFTER together with Michalski&Wagner, dedicates a marathon of transdisciplinary reflections on environmental, social and spatial issues, inviting architects, artists, local and international activists to reflect on the Arenella transformation project and possible political, entrepreneurial and social models of public space transformation, starting from current European experiences.
THE PROGRAMME:
Saturday 1 June, PALERMO, EX-CHIMICA ARENELLA / PALAZZO BUTERA
MORNING
10:30-11:45 — Ex-Chimica Arenella Site visit
11:50 -13:00 — Guided walk of the seaside township with the Arenella Neighborhood Workshop
AFTERNOON
14:50-15:00 — SOCIAL & CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN PALERMO
10:30-11:45 — Introduction: Culture and Social Enterprise in Palermo with Cristina Alga (MMV), Claudio Gulli (Palazzo Butera), Laboratorio Quartiere Arenella, Cantieri Culturali della Zisa
15:40-16:05 — STRATEGIES & ACTIONS FOR TRANSFORMATIONS with Paola Viganò; architect and urban planner, founder of SPV (Brussels/Milan), professor in Urban Theory and Urban Design at EPFL and at the IUAV University of Venice
16:05-16:30 with Muck Petzet; architect, founder of Muck Petzet Architects (Munich), curator and professor of sustainable design at USI (Mendrisio)
17:00-17:25 — DEVELOPMENT & GOVERNANCE with Michael Obrist; professor for housing and design at TU Vienna and partner of feld72 architekten zt gmbh (Vienna)
17:25-17:50 with Roberta Jurčić; architect and partner B+ (Berlin), member of the teaching team at station+ at ETH Zurich
18:20-18:45 — CURRENT EXPERIMENTS & FUTURE SCENARIOS with Tom Emerson; professor of architecture and Dean of the Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich and co-founder of 6a architects (London)
18:45-19:10 with Laboratorio Roma050; urban research lab coordinated by Stefano Boeri represented by Riccardo Ruggeri, architect (Rome)
:AFTER is a project by Pietro Airoldi, Lisa Andreani, Jacopo Costanzo (WAR), Zeno Franchini (Marginal), Francesca Gattello (Marginal), Valeria Guerrisi (WAR), Izabela Anna Moren (Fondazione Studio Rizoma) invented to explore and interrogate the last and next 100 years of architecture in Sicily. Elena Catalano has joined the team in 2024. The first edition of :AFTER. Festival Diffuso di Architettura in Sicilia took place from 22 to 29 April 2023 in various locations in Sicily.
For Arena Arenella, the group collaborates with Michalski&Wagner, an architectural firm founded in 2016 by Martha Michalski and Marco Wagner in Berlin and Palermo.