Colonial, migration and trade routes are cyphered in the figure of the tomato, all while representing a strong signifier of Italian culture. Today, its consumption and production echo a colonial hangover within the Italian agricultural landscape.

In "Pomo d’Orographies: Counter-agronomies of Exploitation" Francesca Beltrame puts forward a decolonial and feminist approach to speaking about space and policies. Within the social context of the italian town of Nardò, the project proposes to rethink domesticity, relation, and inscription. Here, the architect explores her grandmother’s tablecloth as a device to install a much-needed dialogue and exchange between the migrant communities and Italian society with the ambition of alleviating the existing social inequalities and reducing the gap between what we eat and how it ends up on our plates.

The project was developed within the contexts of the Royal College of Art.

KOOZ What prompted the project?

FB Last year for a media studies project I researched the exploitation of migrant workers on Italian tomato fields in parallel to the over-romanticization of the made in Italy. Initially it started more as a performative project to highlight the intersection of gender and racial struggles. This initial method of inquiry led to expose the transnational and spatial nature of the issue. The year after I decided to pursue it into my architectural design unit to explore the spatial implications surrounding this issue and the ways in which these injustices are entangled and compromise the domestic and public space. Therefore, the project was prompted by a need to adopt a decolonial and feminist approach when thinking and designing space.

KOOZ What questions does the project address and which does it address?

FB The project raises questions on various scales: on a transnational scale it questions the role of global trade agreements and legal regimes in producing space. On a regional scale it highlights how the supply chain of tomatoes and agro-capitalism affect people and exacerbate soils.

Finally, on an urban level it questions the role of the public space in this current geo-political atmosphere. The project addresses the lack of mediation between white Italian society and migrant communities that is produced by this mode of production.Migrant communities live segregated from the cities in “ghettos” in the middle of the fields. Space and architecture are weaponized against them to sustain production. The project also ponders on the potential of starting relation¹ from re-thinking domesticity in the public space. The proposal revolves around collective cooking, bringing the kitchen outside of the single house and making it the space for negotiation and exchange.

Foregrounding this kind of critical reading of our environment allowed me to engage differently with the city and think of alternative meanings and roles it could acquire beyond its current state of social and racial segregation.

KOOZ How and to what extent does the project challenge and explore the role of the architect within our contemporary landscape?

FB As architects, we shouldn’t only expect to design but to train to understand the various factors that produce certain spatial conditions. In my project particularly, I use the lens of architecture to highlight issues of racism, spatial segregation and exploitation in Puglia surrounding agriculture and migration. The project then challenges the notion of the architect as the one providing a fast solution to a problem. For instance, there is an obvious housing issue, however providing a quick and easy housing scheme is a limiting view of the architect’s agency, since it doesn’t take into consideration why there is a housing issue in the first place.

My project repositioned the architect to be someone that engages and offers their skills to build on the already existing work of people in a specific context rather than defaulting to being an external agent. In fact, the idea of creating the infrastructure for a public event stemmed from a conversation with the association Diritti a Sud. While discussing with them how I could contribute to their work from London, they were more interested in my research and potentially hosting a public event with the tablecloth in Nardò above other possible intervention.

KOOZ You talk about using your grandmother's table as both "a design practice" and "as a spatial tool", could you expand on the methodology of the project further?

FB During the project I was extremely concerned with the limitations of student projects and to some extent architectural education in easily defaulting in speaking about people rather than with people.

The conditions under this system of racial capitalism affect people’s lives in a complex and multi-facetted way, therefore I found primary methods such as conversations, testimonies most appropriate. The tablecloth allowed me to create the spatial conditions for conversation and engage people by giving a bit of myself first.

My design practice started with these moments of gathering and sharing, where the material nature of the tablecloth allowed me to travel to different settings: in the home, at the Embassy, at the market…

The accumulation of performative acts with the tablecloth informed the proposal for Nardò both in terms of the potential and scale of designing for activities such as collective cooking and eating. While the practice of embroidery is a way to foster and recognize the history of these exchanges and its participants after each meal. Embroidery is a practice that takes time, which is one of the reasons I incorporated it into my methodology. Time is a way to express and practice care, which I believe has the power to form strong social relations and have a structural impact on the long term. Therefore, my design practice when translated into architecture aspires to have the same relation to time and care.

KOOZ Rather than designing an artefact, the proposal "scales" up the tablecloth at the scale of the square and of the village of Nardo through a series or diverse interventions. What is the value of the project occupying the public space of the "piazza"?

FB The “piazza” in Italian towns is meant to be the ultimate typology of sociability. However, especially in Nardò, the public square is not accessible or inviting for everyone in Nardò. The public space is mainly catered to white Italians and tourists, while on the outskirts migrants live in precarious conditions.

The project proposes to subvert and renovate the meaning of the piazza as an architecture of sociability that matches a decolonial ambition for the region. Where the piazza is open for new relations and narratives. It’s a statement to emphasise that everyone’s rights are inter-connected and consumed in space.As Musse (a founding member of Diritti a Sud) wrote on the tablecloth: “il diritto vale per tutti” which translates to “Rights apply to everyone”.

KOOZ How do you imagine the community interacting with the project and programme on a daily and monthly basis?

FB On a monthly recurrence the middle of the square becomes a communal kitchen for a public event series I imagined hosted by the association Diritti a Sud and the town hall, where migrants and Italians come together to prepare a meal with the surplus agricultural produce of that season. Currently, the square is void of any pavement variations which on one side is functional for hosting pop up activities however on the other can be perceived as daunting and un-inviting to occupy by migrants when nothing is “officially” planned. The event series would allow everyone involved to build up confidence for spontaneous takeovers of the pavement modifications I designed and making them their own.

The permanent communal kitchen for migrants which I proposed to replace an existing restaurant facing the square would operate daily. Finally, the now tourism center, I propose to convert into a Seed Exchange because of the urgency to safeguard seed biodiversity and counter the monocultural practices of the area. The Seed Exchange has a very different temporality than a seed bank. People can come to leave and pick up seeds seasonally. Relation is a constitutive element of seed culture. In fact, seeds need to be exchanged and re-planted to prevent a particular seed from expiring, which means it can no longer sprout and its variety goes lost.²

KOOZ How would you envision the project developing and scaling up to an infrastructure and the scale of the country?

FB The aim of the project is that over time the central square of Nardò becomes an alternative space for self-governance and negotiation between all the inhabitants of the area.

The issues I raised in Puglia are not restricted to the south of Italy, similar inequalities surrounding migration and segregation exist elsewhere in Italy and Europe. The tablecloth is personal to me and might not have the same meaning in other cultures or work for everyone, but I believe that other “tool” or “props”³ can enable moments of conviviality with similar outcomes.

Therefore, for the project to scale to the country level, I would still imagine it to start locally to then develop into a network of “piazzas”, where the communities of each town might communicate even across countries.

KOOZ What is for you the power of the architectural imaginary?

FB In my project I argue that policies and space are accomplices and perpetrate social inequalities. I use the architectural imaginary to show what may lay beyond what I criticised. I believe other modes of living together exist. However, to imagine them means to firstly expose the current geo-political and neo-colonial entanglements that sustain and aggravate those inequalities in space. Only then, when the architectural imaginary is deployed it has the power to advance people's agendas and demonstrate that alternative ways of being need not to be feared but urgently embraced.

Bio

Francesca Beltrame is a spatial practitioner based in Rome and London, whose work lies at the crossroads between architecture and activism. Her practice is research-led and focuses on the potential of addressing governmental policies and unpacking conflicts through architecture and performance, whilst her work is driven by media experimentation and draws inspiration from the concept of political ecologies to understand contemporary landscapes and human conditions. Francesca completed her MA in Architecture at the Royal College of Art in 2022. For her final thesis project she was part of ADS 2 (architectural design studio 2) titled: Black Horizons: worlding within the ruins of Racial Capitalism led by tutors Dele Adeyemo, Ibiye Camp and Dámaso Randulfe.
In 2019, Francesca graduated with a BSc in Architecture from the University of Bath and worked for one year at Foster+Partners in London before joining the Royal College of Art MA Architecture programme. Prior to that she has collaborated on projects at Husos Arquitectos in Madrid and Aim architecture in Shanghai.