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, the landscape is worked on, looking for the interaction between the built, the more natural and the intermediate territories. Understanding how people build and modify the landscape and how we inhabit it, and it builds us and our identity.

“At one time we were afraid of the forest. It was the forest of the wolf, the ogre, the darkness. It was the place where we could get lost. When our grandparents used to tell us stories, the forest was the favourite place to hide from enemies, traps and troubles. [At one time, we felt safe among the houses, in the city, with the neighbourhood. This was the place where we looked for our companions, where we found them to play together. That was our place, the place where we hid, where we organised the gang, where we played mummy, where we hid the treasure…. […] But in a few decades, everything has changed. There has been a tremendous, rapid, total transformation, the likes of which our society has never seen (at least according to documented history). [The forest has become beautiful, luminous, the object of dreams and desires. The city, on the other hand, has become dirty, grey, monstrous. […] In recent decades, and in the last fifty years in particular, the city, born as a place for meeting and exchange, has discovered the commercial value of space and has altered all concepts of balance, well-being and community to follow only programmes of profit, of interest. It has been sold, prostituted. […] The city is now like the forest of our fairy tales”.

FrancescoTonucci