Once upon a time (and still today) there was (and is) Scuola Bottega San Giuseppe

The story (with a happy ending) of an architect "trapped"

A Dive into the Distant Past: 2014. I had finished university a few months earlier, and in the name of consistency, I tried to become an architect. Of course, after decades of the highest demand for architects, we had all studied architecture, and the world no longer needed us... Perfect timing, but oh well: let's try to go to some studio where, even if they don’t care about hiring me, I can see what this job is like. Improbable hours, computers day and night, other people’s high ambitions, my minimal recognition, a black-market salary of 4 euros an hour (for the male colleagues, it was 8: lucky them…). And then, the worst of the worst: only designs for competitions, things that remain in the air and in a folder on a computer. An immaterial life: zero satisfaction. Not all architecture works are like this, I know, but I believe you can't blame my growing disgust for the profession.

Francesca is a friend from university. We made beautiful models together, stop-motion videos, and fantastic calculations for beams and pillars (fantastic in the sense of "imaginative": none of them were correct, luckily we don’t build buildings).

It seems that Francesca had an idea and gave me a gift: she hired me for a mini-project, a project to actually make! The furnishing of an office, 4 meters by 3, an empty box full of big thoughts. Because I saw "only" an architecture project, but in reality, it was a project called "Trencadìs: recovery of people, places, and materials." The person was me (I realized this later), the place was the 4x3 office, and the materials came with a beautiful story and unexpected protagonists...

Every piece of furniture had to be designed to be made with materials salvaged from temporary fair setups: pieces of chipboard as heavy as lead, wood full of nails, and half-painted planks full of splinters.

But the best part was yet to come... Who would work with these pieces? Francesca and Enrico took me to Rimini, to a warehouse where two Masters with a capital M were waiting for us: Giuliano (the legendary down-to-earth blacksmith, sublime cook) and Loris (unstoppable carpenter with pointed fingers). Age: over 60. Old-school artisans, pensioners, eternal workers, loud voices and big hands, logical thoughts and a will to work that makes us look lazy. But above all: educators.

That warehouse in Rimini was the Scuola Bottega San Giuseppe, an association where the two great Masters ran a workshop for boys who had dropped out of school too early because they had one certainty: no desire to study. Inside those cold walls, there were shavings everywhere, work tables, organized tools, and salvaged pieces of wood. Every nail to remove was an opportunity to teach a boy the meaning of work, that thrill of being alive and contributing to something bigger than us.

The boys, beautiful in their carpenter aprons, were constantly under the guidance of these unstoppable masters, who looked at them with affection and yelled at them with the tough educational methods of our grandparents’ generation. Oh, you wouldn’t believe it: happy boys!

The workday started at 7:00 AM, non-stop with saws and sandpaper until 1:00 PM, then a fish lunch together at Giuliano's house. And the best part: the goal was achieved. It was so hard to go to work treated like adults that everyone went back to studying (while still going to eat fish at Giuliano's).

They were the ones who would make my designs for the 4x3 office furniture: the projects had to be simple because they were the tool to teach boys who knew little about carpentry. They had to have special measurements because we had to use the material available with the sizes it had, they had to be beautiful because they would actually be used, and they would also be donated! And a gift must be beautiful inside and out. So, let's go with Architecture!

In the end, the little office was born, white and gray, with furniture of slightly strange dimensions, some imperfections, and a fantastic story of the people who brought it to life.

I was so happy that it wasn’t enough to just take a few nice photos: I took a piece of old plaster and framed it, and it still sits next to the little picture with the tuft of grass from Dall'Ara the night Bologna returned to Serie A. In my little altar of big joys.

Thanks to Francesca and the Scuola Bottega, I’m still here today, an architect who does strange things, always a bit imperfect, and who works more with people than with walls.

And Scuola Bottega is still here, with the same spirit and different works. It’s now in other workshops, new masters have taken the place of Giuliano and Loris (let’s give these pensioners a bit of peace!), new kids are learning to use their hands, heads, and hearts, and new objects are born from their work.

This is the story. I wanted to tell you so you know why Scuola Bottega is truly something to love. As for me, it will always remain in my heart because it’s a bit of my beginning, when I started seeing new perspectives and began practicing architecture in a completely new way. Perhaps back then, I had already unknowingly started down the path toward design of relationships... Who knows where it will take me, I’m continuing this way.

This is the logo of Scuola Bottega, and it tells the story better than I do. If you look closely, something’s missing: the carpenter is alone, without the boys by his side... Yet it’s as if they are there too, because the thin line crossing him describes the gaze of the Masters (who couldn’t be masters if they are alone...): a thread tied tightly with two knots on the hands and heart, a line that comes from outside, passes through him, and goes further. Then I realized that the boys are there too, they’re just outside the frame.