transforming urban space

The aim of ‘A Vila da Mañá’ is to change the model of town or city, we believe that another one can be possible. This is achieved through the protagonist participation of local children and adolescents who, by working with fundamental concepts through tactical urban planning actions, become active citizens capable of transforming their spaces.

In this case, you work with the space, being the body that travels and plays in the spaces with all the senses deployed, through the experimentation of light, texture, colour, sound… transforming public spaces into common ones.

“At one time we were afraid of the forest. It was the forest of the wolf, of the ogre, of darkness. It was the place where we could get lost. When our grandparents told us stories, the forest was the favorite place to hide enemies, traps, anguish. […] At one time, we felt safe between houses, in the city, with the neighborhood. This was the place where we looked for our partners, where we found them to play together. Our place was there, the place where we hid, where we organized the gang, where we played moms, where we hid the treasure… […] But in a few decades, everything has changed. There has been a tremendous, rapid, total transformation, such as our society had never seen (at least as recorded in recorded history). […] The forest has become beautiful, luminous, the object of dreams and desires. The city, on the other hand, has become something dirty, grey, monstrous. […] In recent decades, and in a totally evident way in the last fifty years, the city, born as a place of meeting and exchange, has discovered the commercial value of space and has altered all the concepts of balance, welfare and community to follow only programs of benefit, of interest. It has been sold, it has been prostituted. […] The city is now like the forest of our stories.”

Francesco Tonucci