2.3 sqm per second. 20 hectares per day. These are the amounts of natural or semi-natural soil that Italy loses today. In the last 50 years, almost one in three agricultural land (about 30% of the total) has disappeared due to abandonment and cementification. Concrete covers 21,500 square kilometers of Italian territory, 5,400 of which are exclusively for buildings, an area the size of Liguria region, a geologically fragile land, which continues its ruthless and invasive cementification of risk areas.
CEMENTUM is a visual research on the phenomenon of cementification in Liguria, one of the smallest Italian region, eaten up by concrete and saved by the soil guardians. The project was born to collect visual evidence of land consumption between past and present. From the effects of the economic boom, in which reconstruction coincided with the destruction of the coast, to the present day, in which real estate speculation operates unchecked in the name of tourism, and therefore profit. In the name of modernity and the right to the sea, Liguria has radically transformed during decades, consuming space that it never had. A wild, uncontrolled and dominant binge.
An ongoing journey in search of the dual root of this region: one uprooted and transformed into concrete and the other resistant and tenacious, taken care by the soil guardians, who, since the 60s, has preserved and not sold off his land.
The 2024 ISPRA Report on Land Consumption points out that the soil consumed in the first 300 meters from the ligurian coastline is 48,21%, double the national average. Considering the particular morphology of this region, the depth from the coast drops to 100-150m. And here the soil consumed exceeds 70-80%.
The visual narrative of land consumption tell also the stories of those who guard the soil every day. Unconscious guardians, capable of witnessing to a humanity anchored to its own soil and attached to the roots of the house, while around the earth chokes. A silent but effective resistance. The one that observes the soil evolving, leaving it free to breathe.
