L'utilità dell'inutile - The Usefulness of Uselessness - La utilidad de lo inutil

Critical essay on teaching experiment “Inhabiting the Territory”: a workshop stretching between Italy and Chile, a place for engineering direct experiences. It works at the crossroads between architecture, design and landscape, to recognise – through contact and seeing the differences – how they are contaminated and connected, their contents and concepts, potentials and programmes. It tries to link distant places, unexpected materials, local and material culture, the dense city with the wider low-density countryside,... the Quattro Canti di città in Palermo and Loanco on the Pacific Ocean. It is didactics using the mind and hands, an experiment before the real thing. It is doing without being afraid of getting it wrong, it is listening, waiting, listening to each other… and looking until you find. The experience is long and complex, involving Juan Román and Gaetano Licata, plus a larger work group and around twenty students, working side by side and at a distance, between Palermo and Talca, for over two years.