THE IMPRINT IN RAW EARTH

YEAR +

2018

ORGANISER +

Marginal Studio
in collaboration with
Elena Campa link

LOCATION +

Palermo | Italy

The Imprint of Raw Earth
Social Design workshop - training and prototypes

A two-day practical workshop on terracruda, to experiment the relief printing of a pattern on raw earth supports and to address the phenomenon of global migrations in relation to colonialism and local knowledge.

Together with Elena Campa, a Milan based designer and print artisan, Marginal Studio developed a workshop that sets itself as the first exploration on raw earth within Counter Colonial Aesthetics framework. This material is a symbol of shared cultural heritage and it is at the base of Mediterranean vernacular construction techniques as well as high-quality contemporary solutions.

Counter Colonial Aesthetics is an exhibition and a public programme that presents the work of Marginal Studio in the city of Palermo in the form of an inquiry into the potential of migrations to reframe contemporary design function and visions.

The workshop activities, open to the city, will take place in the former madhouse of Palermo and next to a SPRAR, Protection System for Refugees and Asylum Seekers, in order to collaborate with its hosts to build a material-based interaction between participants.

Inspired by the decorations of Sicilian majolica, the workshop starts from designing a material pattern to create rolling blocks with everyday materials, which will become matrices for a relief decoration on raw earth supports. The participants will dough and draft the raw earth, create the roll matrix to print patterns on the support designed by getting inspired by the surroundings, and experiment with the relief printing. The prototypes developed by using these techniques and materials allow gaining a greater understanding of this material heritage.