The magazine Abitare has published in May, 1990 an extract of the work, with a text written by arch. Paola De Santis:
CERERE PASTA FACTORY
Turn-of-the-century Italy saw the beginnings of industrialization in what was basically an agricultural society, so it was hardly surprising if a pasta factory (with combined flour mill) was named after Ceres, the Roman corn-goddess. The complex of buildings and courtyards still retains the divinity's name in Italian - Cerere to this day.
Marked by the years, yet dignified nonetheless, the facades run along three sides Via Tiburtina, Via degli Ausoni, and Piazza dei Sanniti - in Rome's San Lorenzo district. Abandoned in the 1960s, the Cerere building is an example of the gradual, low-key conversion of an industrial building. The last fifteen years have seen it being reoccupied, slowly but surely, and today some thirty people - artists for the most part - have set up studios inside it. Each tenant has cleaned up and restored his own particular space to different degrees, giving the handsome 10ft spaces a new lease of life. True, the common areas have been neglected, but maybe that isn't really part of a rental tenant's responsibilities after all.
The San Lorenzo district
"The district is in the eastern part of the city ... just outside the Aurelian walls, between the south-east side of the Termini station complex, the Basilica of San Lorenzo and Verano cemetery, and the rail yard which constitutes its southern border ... Most of it was constructed by private speculators between 1878 and 1930, outside the guidelines laid down in the town plans of 1873 and 1883. It was destined for low-income housing, craftsmen's workshops and light industry, and for this reason was 'naturally' separated from the rest of the city. The town plan of 1909 merely made a note of the state of affairs and included the district within the urban perimeter. Built according to a typically late-19th-century plan, like the nearby Esquiline and Prati districts, San Lorenzo - unlike the latter two has always been in rather a bad state, so much so that improvements had to be carried out while it was still under construction, starting after an outbreak of cholera in 1886. On July 19, 1943, the district suffered the worst bombing that Rome was to receive from the Anglo-American Allies during the Second World War. 1600 people died, countless homes were destroyed, and many others badly damaged ... In the postwar period the quarter reached a new low where decay and abandon were concerned" (from San Lorenzo 1881-1981 by Marcello Pazzaglini, Officina Edizioni). Today, though, the picture has reversed. The convenient location has attracted new inhabitants, the kind of people who purchase their own homes and renovate them. Little by little they are replacing the elderly residents, who made up 22% of the population until only a few years back. San Lorenzo is certainly changing, but the process of gentrification has so far failed to erase its working-class soul.
The building
The Cerere building - the oldest of three major factory buildings in the San Lorenzo district (the others are the Sciarra glassworks and the Wührer beer brewery) - is undoubtedly the most important feature of the area's repertory of industrial archaeology. Founded in 1905, in the following year the company commissioned engineer Pietro Satti to create its premises by modifying and adapting two pre-existing structures: a two-storey residential building built in 1898 between Via Tiburtina and Via degli Ausoni, and a parallel, four-storey industrial building dating from 1893. The project called for the enclosure of the complex in a block, maintaining the two-storey front on Via Tiburtina. The first version of the project was not approved, due to the poor quality of the prospects. In the subsequent designs the building on Via Tiburtina grew to four-storey, with brick walls and cast-iron columns, while a third of the rear courtyard was taken up by a large covered gallery. In 1912 two floors in reinforced concrete were added to the inner building, one other to the building in Via Tiburtina, and a mansard roof - after a long dispute with the building commission - along Via degli Ausoni. Furthermore, another building was added, facing partially onto Piazza dei Sanniti. Almost 50 years later in 1960, the pasta factory went out of business, and the complex was left empty; only a few of its rooms were used for warehousing by a small number of rental tenants. But things began to change in 1975, when the artists started to arrive.
A small group consisting of sculptor Nunzio di Stefano, painters Walter Gatti and Giuseppe Gallo, and set designer Luigi Quintili discovered that the factory offered ideal workspaces, which they rented, renovated and made into studios. Between 1978 to 1980, they were joined by painter/sculptor Luigi Campanelli, photographer Angelo Caligaris, and Argentine painter Oscar Turco, who all settled there. Shows were held at the time in individual studios, on the initiative of the artists themselves. In 1983 the group was joined by painter Gianni Dessì and his wife, American painter Martha Boyden, painters Luigi Ceccobelli, Marco Tirelli, Pietro Pizzi Cannella, and architect Armando Sodi. In 1984 an exhibition entitled "Ateliers" was thought up by art critic Achille Bonito Oliva and organized as a tour of the studios of six of the artists. From 1984 to 1985 there were more arrivals: painters Luca Sanjust and Sabina Mirri, writer Javier Barreiro and theatre director Alessandro Cassino. The Ausoni Cultural Center was opened in March 1987, with the inaugural exhibition Goethe in Italy. The space is managed by Italo Mussa and Arnaldo Romani Brizzi, and hosts exhibitions of photography, painting and sculpture, as well as Fashion shows. The last two years have seen all the studios being occupied, including the semi-basement: there are no more vacancies in the Cerere building. It has become a genuine "house of art", a reference-point and centre of activity which is gaining importance in Rome's artistic circles. |
