Freedom Room, Triennale Milano.

Meeting “on the go” with Aldo Cibic at Triennale Milano where was exhibited “Freedom Room”: a new hospitality concept, an idea for temporary and social housing in a 4 x 2,7 sqm surface. A low cost, essential housing module (spread hotels, hostels) conceived, designed and made in jail with inmates.

Freedom room is a project developed by Aldo Cibic, Tommaso Corà, Marco Tortoioli Ricci in collaboration with one of the Italian High Security Prisons, Spoleto’s correctional facility. Comodo – a cooperative- has started since 2003 its education activities in that prison, dedicated to inmates’ professional training. Working with a group of inmates they came up with new ideas about “low cost living”; about objects that have to be necessarily multifunctional; about spaces that must be flexible and adaptable. A cell is a closed shell, defined as a spatial module. Inside the cell, one finds out that space necessarily has a flexible dimension that changes according to how it is experienced by each individual. Freedom Room could also be a new local social network idea, a new way of accessing, booking, or otherwise relating to find out by whom and how the modules are occupied, letting you know your module’s neighbour and its habits, building up a virtual and a real community. Facing the actual crisis, prisons can be intended as a potential for new ideas and examples for innovation, social cohesion and renovation.