Annalaura Fornasier

The following work, entitled The Forest Feast, reflects my interest in rural communities, collectivity, rituality, and the evolving nature of forested landscapes as a result of anthropic influences and of the coexistence of people, nature, and technology.

Upon graduating from BA Architecture at the Arts University Bournemouth in 2015, I was nominated for the President's Medals Bronze Award and Architectural Journal Student Prize. During my undergraduate I embarked on a collaborative group project with Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing China, to develop spatial solutions to regenerate the rural village of Fangkou, Chengkou County. The project gave me the opportunity to value teamwork, engage with local authorities and the community while learning about local practices, the community's issues, and traditions.

For two summers, I interned at Locatelli Partners in Milan, specialized in the retail sector, interior and furniture design. I was able to witness the development of conceptual stores for major retail brands and had the opportunity to work on the furniture design for Rinascente Department Store in Rome. 

After graduating I worked for a year at Bright Space Architects, based just outside the New Forest, Hampshire, primarily working on residential and regenerative rural projects as well as in nearby seaside towns. Working and studying at an international level, in the thriving urban context of Milan, the rural area of Fangkou Village in China, and the UK South Coast has helped me develop an understanding of the changing economical, geographical, and social conditions, as well as how to work with the different local authorities and regulations while listening to the communities' needs. 

My final year project is a development of the dissertation research I undertook in my first year at the RCA. I investigated the use of timber in the contemporary vernacular architecture of the Dolomites in Italy, while interviewing and getting to know local architects active on the Dolomitic territory. The forest, climatic changes, food, and people became the basis for the following thesis project, also investigated from a historical point of view through The Cultural Forest research paper completed during the History and Theory Studies.

The Forest Feast

The project critiques the current abandonment and lack of cultural interventions in Dolomitic forests. 

It sees forests as a result of anthropic influences and highlights their productive potential - where men, nature, and technology can cohabit. 

Vaia windstorm acts as a trigger, resurfacing issues of uncontrolled forestation and neglect in the last century in Italy. 

The project acts on three scales: territorial, convivial and architectural, situated at the Ex- Eni Village, in the Dolomites (Cadore Region, Veneto, Italy), designed by Architect Edoardo Gellner in the 50s for Eni oil corporation as a holiday residence for its employees. Since 2014, Progettoborca has worked permanently on the site, re-establishing the Ex-Eni village’s cultural value through regeneration, by activating artists' residencies and research projects. 

How can culture mediate in the post-disaster forested landscape? How can food become a tool for the forest’s transformation?

Starting from Vaia and continuing with my on-site research through the banquet’s participatory experience, the work projects itself into a digital fictional future narrative of a festival symposium, a design tool to imagine hypothetical scenarios and rituals on site. 

Five scenarios are designed positing the question 'how can a digital narrative explore the future forest production in the Dolomites?'

So, from the point of view of an architect returning to the site in June 2051, the narrative dramatizes ways in which to see the forest as an experimentation and production space where men, nature, technology, and architecture attempt to coexist.