Nearly three-quarters of Europe’s population now lives in cities and this figure is growing. This means not only the constant growth of cities and suburbs, but the disappearance of familiar cultural and natural landscapes. Migration and its consequences forms the theme of the Million Donkey Hotel, a project by feld72, a collective of Italian, French and Austrian architects based in Vienna.

Meeting

image: Hertha Hurnaus and feld72 | © all rights reserved

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Working together

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Prata Sannita is a village divided into two, consisting of a mediaeval bongo, known as the Prata Inferiore, which cascades down a hill from a castle, and a newer part, the Prata Superiore, which owes its structure above all to the victory of the motor car and other promises of modernism. In the course of the last century Prata Inferiore was dramatically affected by migration caused by poverty and is now only a small part of the village, inhabited by a minority made up largely of elderly people, and with a very large number of empty buildings, some of which are already in ruins. How could these two clearly separated areas of the village be linked again? How and for whom could be the qualities of the almost sculptural spatial landscape be experienced once again? How can spaces that stand for loss become a self-confident part of a new Prata Sannita?

Population index

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4320 hours of voluntary human working force

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4.8km of anti-mosquito string

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12.000 kg of shifted mass

image: Hertha Hurnaus and feld72 | © all rights reserved

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