The Design of Return Donatella Caggiano

Welcome to our episode finale of this season of The Design of Return podcast.

Our episode 9 is the story of Nida and her longing to return to her homeland in Afghanistan while rebuilding a sense of home somewhere else.

Poet Adrienne Rich wrote « It is always what is under pressure in us that explodes into poetry ».

When home has been taken away, longing is like that pressure that lurks in the darkness until art can give it a place in the world, even though this place is never fully rooted but rather oscillate in between home’s absence and presence.

Nida took asylum in Germany with her family after having to flee her land. Even though her physical presence was no longer something she could offer, she never stopped working with and for women in Afghanistan though her work with Pangea Onlus, a foundation that has been operating in Kabul since 2003 working at empowering Afghan women to become part of the world again by coming out of a daily life of violence and discrimination.

In our conversation we explore both the tenderness and the pain of Nida’s relationship with her homeland; how her work with Pangea Onlus shaped her purpose and about what it means to dwell with longing and rebuild a sense of home through poetry.

The interview is in Farsi, Nida’s original language, interpreted and translated in English for us by Iante Roach.

Thank you for listening.

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What does food, and in particular, bread, activate for us in our experience of placemaking?

In today’s episode I interview Laura Lazzaroni, author, food expert and bread consultant.

Laura is Italian, lived in New York and returned to Italy after five years there.

She is the author of several books, like “The New Cucina Italiana” edited by Rizzoli in English, and “La formula del pane” edited by Giunti, in Italian. She recently curated together with professor Massimo Montanari the exhibition “Gusto. Gli Italiani a Tavola. Italians around the table” at M9 Museum in Venice, which they describe as “a big home, made of many rooms that tell the story of Italian Gusto capturing the spirit of a nation through its relationship with food and conviviality.

In our interview we explore how food is one of the main ways to read our surroundings to build and re-build a sense of place; how bread is a non-binary product made of “multitudes”; and the lessons we can learn from wheat about the migrant experience of displacement.

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Bentornatə. Il settimo episodio di The Design of Return podcast è la storia di chi dal Sud Italia se n’è andata, ma ha trovato un modo per tornare da in-betweener.

Racconto la mia esperienza personale e intervisto Rita Elvira Adamo, co-fondatrice della Rivoluzione delle Seppie, un gruppo attivo di giovani professionisti internazionali che opera in Calabria con un approccio trans-disciplinare. La loro missione è creare una nuova comunità, alimentandola attraverso l'interscambio di conoscenze, per abitare un luogo temporaneamente ma in maniera costante.

Il progetto si chiama Belmondo. Nasce come idea alla London Metropolitan University con il gruppo di ricerca e lavoro di Rita e approda come prima tappa a Belmonte Calabro per sperimentare con linguaggi architettonici collaborativi.

Rita ci parla da Londra, dove ha appena consegnato l'ultimo manoscritto del suo dottorato. Con lei, esploriamo cosa significa vivere in-between tra Londra e la Calabria, perché lei si definisce “out of scale”, una “fuori taglia”, e conosciamo meglio le Seppie e Belmondo.

Questo episodio è in Italiano. Per un approfondimento in inglese, iscrivetevi alla nostra newsletter “The Atlas” a theatlas.substack.com.

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Welcome back. Episode 7 of The Design of Return podcast is a story of people who left the Italian south but approached a return there as in-betweeners.

I tell my own tale and interview Rita Elvira Adamo, co-founder of la Rivoluzione delle Seppie, an active group of young international professionals who works in Calabria with a trans-disciplinary approach. Their mission is to build a new community, fuelled by the exchange of knowledge with the aim of building a new model of living in a place temporarily yet continously.

Their project is called "Belmondo". It was ideated at the London Metropolitan School in Rita’s architecture research and work group. It lands in its first iteration in the town of Belmonte Calabro and operates through experimental architectural languages of collaboration.

Rita speaks with us from London, where she just submitted the final draft of her Phd. With her we explore what it means to live in-between London and Calabria, why she calls herself “out of scale” and we learn more about Le Seppie and Belmondo.

This episode is in Italian. For the episode in English subscribe to our newsletter "The Atlas" at theatlas.substack.com.

Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Every living being can become healthy, strong and fruitful by living within a horizon”. Our most immediate horizon as humans is our body.

Welcome to Episode 6, “Return to my body”. In conversation with Bekka Gunther, we explore what it means to return to your body and your body image as something and someone you fully own.

From growing up in a religious cult, to modeling, to moving behind the lens to be a photographer and knowing she was queer, with Bekka we unravel a journey to feel and understand what it means to build a home in your body, through your body and with your body.

She tells us her story of finding her place in the world as someone who has felt “other” in between different worlds and cultures; how can we think of the body in our culture beyond owning it; and choosing Italy from the United States as her current home with her wife.

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Some of us succeed not despite the range of experiences we have, but because of that.

And Katie Longmyer is an example of that. An ambassador of variety and dissolving this duality we all know too well: that at work you can only be one thing.

As an in-betweener, Katie calls herself “the quiet person in the loud room”. As such, she built her own bridge as a business artist to master the edge between the cultural underground sphere and the corporate executive world.

She proves that a voice with range can shine in a world that only demands single chords.

Born and raised in Washington DC, Katie started off her career in New York as a field representative for Warner Brothers in their music branding department. After seven years she quit to start her own company Good Peoples which she calls a creative platform, ideating, promoting and popularising some of the best nightlife events and music festivals in New York City.

She continued her career as a creative advertising executive. Then pivoted to Chief of Staff to the founder of We Work. Then pivoted again to become partner and managing director at Mother in New York. She's currently a partner of Known Lab, an investment lab deploying builder capital for Bipoc founders and businesses.

All of it without ever putting Good Peoples aside.

In our conversation, we talk about her own definition of success, the challenge, and the wonder of how she held on to nightlife-Katie and daytime-Katie at the same time, and what can we learn about returning to ourselves, over and over again, to be leaders of tomorrow.

Today’s story is about Ayyaa Soma, formerly known as my friend Giovanna Maselli, who ordained as a Buddhist monk, leaving her former self as a fashion journalist behind.

Ayya is the co-founder of Buddhist Insights, a non-profit organization she created with fellow monastic Bhante Suddhaso, dedicated to making monastic teachings more accessible to the general public. Together they are also the co-founders and leaders of Emtpy Cloud, a gender inclusive monastery in New Jersey.

Ayya is the second Italian “Theravada” female monastic and one of seventy-five women in the western world who ordained as a Buddhist monk.

Her story of transit is one of non-return. In today’s interview we speak about her pursuit of happiness by elimination, her journey of transformation and belonging as a woman and the economy of generosity.