Ordinary Fiction

Approximately one quarter of Italian built territory falls under areas of urban expansion and characterized by low-density development. In an Italy increasingly at risk of becoming an open-air museum — trapped between heritage protections and mass tourism — starting with these everyday spaces might be a way to rewrite the narrative and imagine pilot projects capable of breaking open the rules that keep reproducing the same house.

This work seeks to reveal and narrate the predominant spaces of this ambiguous geography: the Provincial Villetta. For decades, the detached villa has symbolised security, providing a tangible asset for storing family wealth and offering a private haven. This belief has shaped much of the countryside, transforming farmland into scattered suburbs.

These suburban houses developed through the tension between a desire for autonomy and the reproduction of sameness. Recurring details reflect these themes: the sloping roof, the veranda, the semi-basement taverna — a hidden, often forgotten space that embodies the suburban middle class’s neglected side and consumerist accumulation.

The single-family house in the countryside is not just a dream of escape from urban rules; it is the material expression of how we occupy and consume land, as well as a transcription of an emotional geography. Today, a growing decay of population in rural areas, aging owners, rising maintenance costs, and stringent renovation requirements are eroding that old certainty and dream. What once was a family asset and the expression of a micro-paradise is now transformed into a long-term obligation, and urgently calls for new ideas, policies, and a revision of the desires which shaped it. The project takes its first steps in the microcosms populating the land stretching between Rome and Florence and envisions extending the context of inquiry to other regions and countries through workshops, visiting schools, exhibitions, writing, and collaborations.