The 2016 Spring Session of Free Home University was built with the desire to take care of the public garden adjacent to the Ammirato Culture House [1], back then our social space  for artistic and engaged practices and a sister initiative of Free Home University that often cohabited in the premise). During three months before the FHU session, Carla Rangel, a researcher and designer part of the group ConstructLab, had lived in ACH and she collecting observations, ideas and a series of hipotesis for the design and the future sustainability of the garden, through collaborations and local activation. She met a lot of people and weaved together skills and desires of those who confirmed their interest and presence, and who enjoyed the process of doing.

The ‘garden with no name at the crossroads of two streets’—had now been christened Giardino Ammirato after the Renaissance philosopher Scipione Ammirato who lived in the structure. Giardino Ammirato became the expression of the group’s desire to reclaim a forgotten space and collaboratively reinvent it for communal and convivial use—and, of course, to be admired.

We were dealing with a problematic area, and a set of questions that always emerge when an intervention is proposed in a ‘public space’ that the city is supposed to maintain, and that is taken over by some habits and spontaneous use, and some get protective, some suspicious, and at the same time ideas that could benefit everyone and help develop a sense of a common good start to appear and a tension is created. Territoriality, control, past and new relationships, projections, curiosity, hostility, enthusiasm, skepticism, optimism, appropriation, indifference… different reactions, from the different stakeholders that we felt needed to be invited, consulted and involved in the process.

Everyone at least agreed that the garden had a historical, social, and environmental value as one of the few green areas in Lecce. Located in a neighbourhood that lacks a sense of identity and belonging, accessed only for its services with few social spaces—it’s declared “dead” by its own inhabitants. And the possibility of a new becoming created fear and refusal as much as energy and self -activation. A committee for the garden was proposed and people started to meet on a (sort of) regular basis. Until the magic happened, when the full ConstructLab and free home university people showed up and the conversation get even more enlarged and our bodies, our hands working, our tools displayed started to create such an energy that for a couple weeks the Ammirato Culture House became the pumping heart of the city.

In the past, we at Free Home University and Ammirato Culture House had attempted to take care of the garden in subtle, relational ways to avoid appropriating the space for hat could have been perceived as ‘private use’. We had tried to restitute it to the community by suggesting possibilities for its use but despite our seasonal cleaning, programming, planting, dancing, and various gatherings, our actions were never sustained and very soon the garden had returned to its state of neglect—used only by dogs and their owners who didn’t clean after them, and a few young people. Passers-by often complained that the garden was dirty and unsafe, and that they would avoid spending time there or bringing their children to play.

In addition, after four years of occupying the Ammirato Culture House, we wanted to increase the presence and participation of neighbours in the house activities. We were aware that some perceived our activities as private and exclusive, despite our vision and work was to make Ammirato Culture House a free, open, convivial place—a culture and social house in the legacy of the casa del popolo- casa della cultura- dopolavoro of socialist memory. Our curatorial approach and the governance model that we were trying to pursue was not clearly communicated or shared enough, maybe. We thought that one of the reasons was the 16th-century fortified architecture that created an enclosed and barricaded space, overpowering our vision and efforts and creating, despite its monumental beauty and uniqueness, a spatial divide between ‘us’ in the building and everyone else in the street, garden, neighborhood.

With these challenges in mind, Free Home University invited ConstructLab to collaborate with us to reimagine the courtyard and garden. Constructlab is a group of artists, builders, designers, architects, and people whose interests converge in certain collective modes and initiatives, working with an open yet defined methodology. They enter spaces by articulating a protocol in which group decisions are based on reactions to the particular needs of a space, inhabitants, commissioners. Through this process, an initial idea is visualized, and through a series of construction experiments and workshops, the design slowly builds as disparate, self-organized components come together. We witnessed passersby joining the group and adding  their own ideas on the spot.

Focusing on the existing qualities of the building, and the sociological formation around the garden, the Giardino Ammirato architectural intervention ended up using scaffold-like structures along both sides of the courtyard wall as spaces where activities could  take place simultaneously inside and outside the Ammirato Culture House. The objective was to create a platform of interconnected initiatives that animate the space and form part of the cultural program of the Ammirato Culture House, inside and outside of the building. The scaffolding literally transformed the wall in a bridge towards the outside, with a series of bench and a display where posters, work of arts or other visual elements of what was happening inside could have been shared with the outside. A sort of dazen bau, a wall newspaper about our initiatives. Strategically the door to access our place from the garden was open and the one access from the opposite street closed to the public, so ACH”s users and friends had to cross the garden to come into the house.

In the first week we will be  co-building, reflection on social design, workshops on furniture building…the second week is an activation with the local community. the new garden will be populated with a number of activity from permaculture to performances, collective reading, screenings, cooking classes, dinners, parties…the group is an international blend of participants CL has invited with some of us and some local friends.

The public programming include also a rainbow festival in collaboration withLeA, LGBTQ organisers, and a 3 days dialogues and performances around Pier Paolo Pasolini poetry and film making with a workshop on critical analysis of the theatrical piece presented.