Materia, the Mediterranean Contemporary Design Festival, celebrates its tenth edition with Agorà as its central theme. From 1 to 4 October, the Complesso Monumentale del San Giovanni in Catanzaro will bring together design, architecture, craftsmanship, research, folklore, music and food, exploring shared spaces and the conditions that are transforming the way we use them today.
Supported by the Regione Calabria – POC 2014/2020 Funds, Action 6.8.3, as part of the Calabria Straordinaria programme, Materia 10 marks its tenth anniversary by bringing the Mediterranean back to the centre as a place of encounter, exchange and cross-pollination. At the heart of the festival will be the complex’s cloister, transformed into La Piazza: a contemporary agora centred on conviviality and Mediterranean hospitality. Here, water and traditional luminarie – decorative light installations rooted in the popular culture of Southern Italy – will enter into dialogue with contemporary design.
Shade as urban infrastructure
One of the central themes will be the relationship between public space and rising temperatures. Shade is no longer interpreted simply as an element of the landscape, but as a genuine form of infrastructure, essential to making squares, schools, courtyards and streets inhabitable once again.
The event “Ombra mediterranea. Il ristoro come infrastruttura urbana” (Mediterranean Shade. Relief as Urban Infrastructure) will address this issue with Vincenzo Caruso, CEO of Fabbridea; Riccardo Maria Pulselli, researcher at the Department of Architecture and Design of the Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria; architect Silvia Aloisio; and journalist and curator Paolo Casicci. Design, research and manufacturing will come together to discuss strategies for adapting public spaces in Mediterranean cities to rapidly changing climatic conditions.
Talks and ten years of emerging talent
La Piazza will also host the aperi-talks, informal conversations exploring different expressions of contemporary design. Guests will include architect Antonio Iraci, designer Antonio Aricò, Martinelli Venezia studio, Paolo Casicci, and artist and designer Massimo Sirelli.
Part of the exhibition will retrace the history of the Talenti di Materia, designers from across Italy selected through the Mediterranean-focused open calls held during previous editions of the festival. Featured projects and designers will include Tip Studio with Apolineo, Eleonora Todde with Decoro Mediterraneo, 400 Gon with Ciabattino, Stella Orlandino with Segnacoli, Sapiens with Pirò, Gabriele Paravati with Piroga and Danilo Randazzo with Teste di moro, together with Chendùdesign and Foro Studio.
Craftsmanship, manufacturing and experimentation
The agora will extend to the processes of making through daily workshops dedicated to wood, iron and ceramics, bringing traditional knowledge into dialogue with contemporary technologies and languages.
Interactive installations by partner companies will explore different aspects of material culture and design: from silk, revisiting Catanzaro’s historic manufacturing tradition through contemporary interpretations of textiles, to handmade terracotta; from sustainability and climate change, explored through innovative systems for thermally efficient doors and window frames, to sustainable mobility. The programme will also encompass the goldsmithing tradition of Mediterranean masters and the evolution of outdoor furniture and swimming pools, drawing attention to the transformation of outdoor spaces and the ways in which we inhabit them.
Calabria according to Massimo Sirelli
Among the installations, Massimo Sirelli will present La mia Calabria è bellissima (My Calabria Is Beautiful), an interactive project that reinterprets the souvenir, transforming it from a stereotypical object into a personal narrative of place. Drawings inspired by the artist’s journeys throughout the region bring together colours, scents, flavours, places and stories, creating a kind of emotional atlas of Calabria designed to be shared and carried elsewhere. In this way, the project interprets the agora as a space where local identity is not simply preserved, but narrated, exchanged and put back into circulation.
Food, music and conviviality
Mediterranean food culture will also become part of the programme, with a large area dedicated to food featuring show cooking by international chefs, traditional flavours and technological islands. Music and folklore will complete the programme, bringing the theme of the agora back to the fundamental dimension of conviviality and the pleasure of being together.
“Ten years ago, talking about design in Calabria seemed like a gamble,” recall Domenico Garofalo and Giuseppe Anania of Officine AD APS, organisers of the festival, noting how over the years Materia has built connections between talents, companies, territories and different cultures. The theme of Agorà therefore becomes both a reflection on the network the festival has built over the past decade and an opportunity to consider the collective spaces that cities need today.
For more information visit materiafestival.com.
