Rende, Italy

What is life like in the biggest south italian university campus?

While driving around in Calabria, it's not uncommon to see unfinished buildings emerging from the yellow, burnt grass. Peeking in, sometimes you even see families eating around their lunch table, through windows cut into the unpainted, brick-red walls. With a strong presence of 'Ndrangheta, it's not a surprise that construction heresies are a sensitive issue on the calabrese ground. Abusive villas are built all the time and sometimes demolished by the authorities. The Legge Ponte in 1967 was meant to enforce public control over unregulated buildings, but a sentence from the Constitutional Court the following year made any real action against contruction-happy landowners uneffective.
Making the calabreses more responsible about their own land has been taken as a didactic challenge. For example, the Università della Calabria, amongst its many faculties, hosts a territorial planning department, with an urbanistic design lab. The university itself has been a huge hit for the small town of Rende it sits in. The campus has literally tripled the town's population since it was designed by architect studio Gregotti Associati. Its huge, red, cubic buildings - one of which is one-kilometer long – are now a landmark and a huge urbanistic catalyst to the whole Cosenza province.

Mission Report

The aim of our mission was to document the students' typical life at Rende, getting information about facilities and services located on the Campus.
From the interviews, it emerged that the University doesn't lack in formative proposals, nor in teaching or facilities (lecture halls, libraries, laboratories). At the same time, the students complain about the lack of both opportunities to gather outside of classes and of cultural activities which could aid their growth as students.
But not everyone stood off and someone committed himself to organize several cultural initiatives missed by students. For example, guys at "Ponteradio", who organized a radio studio inside the cube "18C", where they arrange cultural debates, manage to spread their voice beyond the Campus. Or people from the "Autogested Room", who offer a free location where anyone can organize gigs and exhibitions. They also created the "Libroteca", a library-bookshop where they sell (but also lend) books.
We weren't able to interview any professors because they were all too busy with exams.
Donato Mirra, Giovanni Palmaccio