"AGRItheatre" | Realized Project | San Faustino Garden | Milan | September 2018

“AgriShelter V” workshop will be carried out in conjunction with the annual festivity “Green Week” in order to celebrate the new public park of San Faustino, managed by local associations. The TerraViva visitng professor Claudia Zanfi currently has the concession on a slice of the park for urban bee-keeping, an activity that the TerraViva Program has been studying with her during the past two years. For the event we will use some of the techniques of the “AgriShelter” self-construction system, guided by the architect Narges Mofaharian, to construct a temporary theater with straw bales and prefab wooden frames.

As in previous workshops students will be put into teams of maximum 4-5 people and they will be asked to prepare a research statement (booklet) on subjects such as outdoor theaters, citizen managed parks, wooden structures, self-construction prototypes, etc... They will also be required to execute the work on building the structure. The design for the amphitheater, roughly based on the ancient Greek Bouleuterion, which will be refined and changed, also with input from the students, will require around 60 straw bales. The wooden frame will be assemble using the incastro technique with a minimum use of screws.

The Agrishelter Bouleuterion will serve a series of events on Sept. 29th and 30th, including lectures on the circular economy, urban bee-keeping, biodegradable structures, and new forms of employment for immigrants and unemployed youth. A variety of musical offerings ranging from folk, band music, jazz, classical singing and electronic.

The structure will be dismantled during the following weeks. Straw bales returned to agricultural storage, and the wooden members stored to be recycled in future Agrishelter projects.

Photo Credits © Eugenia Bolla, Stefano Lardera, Narges Mofarahian