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Terremosse

SESAM Terremosse 2026 is an Architecture Festival taking place in Amatrice from July2nd to July 10th, 

and it is part of a series of events

hosted within the EASA network.

EASA

SESAM

EASA (European Architecture Students Assembly) is a longstanding, decentralised network of architecture students and young designers collaborating at the intersection of education and practice. Organised around assemblies, each year a different country within the EASA network hosts the main 2-week-long summer residency (with other smaller events happening throughout the year).
This event is attended by around 600 international participants and consists of around 35 workshops, each with different outputs. EASA is a network for exploring alternative forms of architectural education. The annual gatherings enable participants to explore forms of architectural pedagogy outside of the traditional university context, with students taking the delivery of their education into their own hands.

 

SESAM (Small European Students of Architecture Meeting) is an event for the EASA community, by the EASA community. What distinguishes a SESAM gathering from the main EASA summer gathering is that SESAM assembles a relatively smaller group of people (usually a maximum of 200 people), and takes place in a different moment of the year, so as not to clash with EASA. A smaller group of people allows for a more intimate exploration of the topic, making it an ideal format when themes and approaches appear very specific.

Terremosse
Terremosse
Terremosse
Terremosse

Terremosse 2026

Why Amatrice

We start from a question, wondering: what could 50, 100, 1000 hands do together? How could we organize them at the service of a community? How can we marshal collective action in places where time is suspended at the mercy of a discouraging impasse?

From theory to the need to develop a real methodology - and, if real, replicable and adaptable - our aim is to pursue a concrete response to concrete issues, including reconstruction and abandonment.

Terremosse is the means to a beginning. A ten-day architecture festival gathering 200 young students and professionals in Amatrice, Italy. There, twelve hands-on construction and theoretical workshops will give the chance to tackle some of the questions afflicting territories wounded by natural disasters. We wish to awaken our spirits, or better, to offer an act of love toward architecture: the possibility of doing, the desire of sharing and resisting.

Amatrice is suspended and kept in the memory of most as one of the many towns of Italy’s Inner Areas affected by the 2016 Central Italy Earthquake. Its singular context is the object of our research as Terremosse, and the means to train one’s sensitivity toward it are part of our inquiry, too: ways of observing Amatrice, taking care of it, and, if possible, acting within it.

 

Amatrice is characterized by an acceleration of transversal dynamics, among which is the growing exodus of its population caused by its preexisting condition as an Italian inner area. What’s more, realities like Amatrice are often weakened, paradoxically, by recurring mediatic and seasonal attention, manifested solely at exceptional occasions. 

What and who would we like to be, then, as participants, tutors, organizers, community? We would like to be infusion and diffusion. Carriers of hope triggering a chain reaction; something akin to planting a seed, or to the reverberation of a stone when thrown into the water. Everyone in the valley will know that the Lands have started moving.

Terremosse
Terremosse

Research methodology

To confront Amatrice and its vast territory with the means of the EASA community and, within EASA, of Terremosse, we have brought into play three ingredients: the places, the people who inhabit these places, and the desires the people who inhabit these places hold. The three often intermingle and dissolve category distinctions. In such small realities, the identity of a place inevitably mirrors the singularities of its inhabitants. And because Amatrice’s 69 hamlets carry unique geographical and demographic characteristics, each requires interventions of different nature.

Enabling action in such a diverse and fragmented reality requires a unique kind of clarity and order: a formula connecting places, people, and desires, making the unreadable readable, and weaving histories together.

 

This, we believe, is the key to getting closer to this complex context, and from here, to act. And to act so that the legacy of this event will not populate these places with dreams that belong elsewhere, but rather allow the communities to inhabit their public space in ways and forms that resonate with their spirit.

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Local people who expressed a desire for an intervention, and promised to take care of its afterlife

  2. Students or young professionals from the fields of architecture, design and arts, who have drafted a proposal and will coordinate the 10-day workshops

  3. Students or young professionals from architecture, design, and related fields who participate in the transformation of the desire into tangible spaces
Terremosse
Terremosse
Terremosse
Terremosse

Places

People

We have identified and explored only a few corners the vast and intricate territory of Amatrice, a land of profound contrasts that, despite being home to a mere 2,000 souls, stretches across 69 distinct hamlets over an impressive area of 100 km2. Within this expansive reach, the orography and natural environment seem to be in a state of constant flux, where landscapes never repeat themselves and every turn reveals a new geological narrative. It is a mosaic of wilderness and history, where the sheer scale of the terrain challenges the senses and rewards the curious.

We have come to deeply recognize the value of this breadth; it is a defining characteristic that is not only impossible to ignore while traversing the land but also remarkably difficult to forget once the journey ends. This spaciousness acts as a silent protagonist, shaping the identity of the region and those who inhabit it. To better navigate this complexity, our upcoming festival will focus our attention on eight specific sites, chosen as representative pillars of this diverse landscape:

 

Amatrice, Lago Scandarello, Eremo della Croce, Fiume Molinaro, Capricchia, Casale, Collegentilesco and Cornillo Nuovo.

Reflecting on the reconstruction of Amatrice at the scale of its inhabitants means asserting the importance of practices of care for its landscapes, builiding and spaces. Offering the infrastructure for self-organisation, the locals become the caretakers and producers of their territory. The community of Amatrice benefits from its small dimension in the individual freedom to initiate action and to make a change. This is the great advantage of operating and designing in thew fringe, but it means that architecture should be thought of at a much smaller and human-friendly scale, in synergy with the social and material resources of the place.

 

As part of the event, the People we are going to engage with will play a crucial role in the development of each intervention. Their names are Arianna, Daniele, Paolo e Gastone, Monica, Livia e Simone, Roberto, Gianni, Antonella. They will be our local interlocutors, and, as caretakers, they will carry forward the legacy of what the community of EASA will leave in Amatrice.

Desires

Government-managed reconstruction plans left desires unheard. Because of their simplicity, the aim of this event is to find a space for them. Together with Places and People, the Desiresthat inhabitants express complete our formula. These desires should be thought of as a beginning, a spark for personal interpretation and sensibility, to be merged, transformed, and then rationalised into a workshop proposal.

 

“There was a stage here. I used to perform with the accordion when we had our countryside fe-festivals. Then we made doughnuts stivals. and cooked good food. Nobody comes here anymore now.”

 

“We’d like some benches, where the old take some rest and the children play together.”

 

“The young generations need to get closer to the historic centre. They are losing connection to the territory. Will they ever get back when they are old?”

 

“We want to explore ways to track and remember what is happening in Amatrice. How can we archive its present?”

 

Terremosse

Do you want to partecipate to Terremosse architecture festival as a helper? Check this form and send us your application! 

SESAM Terremosse 2026 is an Architecture Festival taking place in Amatrice from July2nd to July 10th, and it is part of a series of events hosted within the EASA network.

EASA

EASA (European Architecture Students Assembly) is a longstanding, decentralised network of architecture students and young designers collaborating at the intersection of education and practice. Organised around assemblies, each year a different country within the EASA network hosts the main 2-week-long summer residency (with other smaller events happening throughout the year).
This event is attended by around 600 international participants and consists of around 35 workshops, each with different outputs. EASA is a network for exploring alternative forms of architectural education. The annual gatherings enable participants to explore forms of architectural pedagogy outside of the traditional university context, with students taking the delivery of their education into their own hands.

 

SESAM

SESAM (Small European Students of Architecture Meeting) is an event for the EASA community, by the EASA community. What distinguishes a SESAM gathering from the main EASA summer gathering is that SESAM assembles a relatively smaller group of people (usually a maximum of 200 people), and takes place in a different moment of the year, so as not to clash with EASA. A smaller group of people allows for a more intimate exploration of the topic, making it an ideal format when themes and approaches appear very specific.

 

Terremosse
Terremosse

Terremosse 2026

We start from a question, wondering: what could 50, 100, 1000 hands do together? How could we organize them at the service of a community? How can we marshal collective action in places where time is suspended at the mercy of a discouraging impasse?

From theory to the need to develop a real methodology - and, if real, replicable and adaptable - our aim is to pursue a concrete response to concrete issues, including reconstruction and abandonment.

Terremosse is the means to a beginning. A ten-day architecture festival gathering 200 young students and professionals in Amatrice, Italy. There, twelve hands-on construction and theoretical workshops will give the chance to tackle some of the questions afflicting territories wounded by natural disasters. We wish to awaken our spirits, or better, to offer an act of love toward architecture: the possibility of doing, the desire of sharing and resisting.

 

Why Amatrice

Amatrice is suspended and kept in the memory of most as one of the many towns of Italy’s Inner Areas affected by the 2016 Central Italy Earthquake. Its singular context is the object of our research as Terremosse, and the means to train one’s sensitivity toward it are part of our inquiry, too: ways of observing Amatrice, taking care of it, and, if possible, acting within it.

 

Amatrice is characterized by an acceleration of transversal dynamics, among which is the growing exodus of its population caused by its preexisting condition as an Italian inner area. What’s more, realities like Amatrice are often weakened, paradoxically, by recurring mediatic and seasonal attention, manifested solely at exceptional occasions. 

What and who would we like to be, then, as participants, tutors, organizers, community? We would like to be infusion and diffusion. Carriers of hope triggering a chain reaction; something akin to planting a seed, or to the reverberation of a stone when thrown into the water. Everyone in the valley will know that the Lands have started moving.

 

Research methodology

To confront Amatrice and its vast territory with the means of the EASA community and, within EASA, of Terremosse, we have brought into play three ingredients: the places, the people who inhabit these places, and the desires the people who inhabit these places hold. The three often intermingle and dissolve category distinctions. In such small realities, the identity of a place inevitably mirrors the singularities of its inhabitants. And because Amatrice’s 69 hamlets carry unique geographical and demographic characteristics, each requires interventions of different nature.

Enabling action in such a diverse and fragmented reality requires a unique kind of clarity and order: a formula connecting places, people, and desires, making the unreadable readable, and weaving histories together. This, we believe, is the key to getting closer to this complex context, and from here, to act. And to act so that the legacy of this event will not populate these places with dreams that belong elsewhere, but rather allow the communities to inhabit their public space in ways and forms that resonate with their spirit.

Terremosse
  1. Local people who expressed a desire for an intervention, and promised to take care of its afterlife

  2. Students or young professionals from the fields of architecture, design and arts, who have drafted a proposal and will coordinate the 10-day workshops

  3. Students or young professionals from architecture, design, and related fields who participate in the transformation of the desire into tangible spaces

Terremosse
Terremosse
Terremosse

Places

We identified and explored only a few corners of this vast territory, which, despite counting only 2,000 souls, covers, with its 69 hamlets, an impressive area of 100km2, in which orography and natural environment never seem to repeat. We recognized the value of its breadth, a feature that is not only impossible to ignore but also difficult to forget. During the event, we will be focusing our attention on eight sites:

 

Amatrice, Lago Scandarello, Eremo della Croce, Fiume Molinaro, Capricchia, Casale, Collegentilesco and Cornillo Nuovo

People

Reflecting on the reconstruction of Amatrice at the scale of its inhabitants means asserting the importance of practices of care for its landscapes, builiding and spaces. Offering the infrastructure for self-organisation, the locals become the caretakers and producers of their territory. The community of Amatrice benefits from its small dimension in the individual freedom to initiate action and to make a change. This is the great advantage of operating and designing in thew fringe, but it means that architecture should be thought of at a much smaller and human-friendly scale, in synergy with the social and material resources of the place.

 

As part of the event, the People we are going to engage with will play a crucial role in the development of each intervention. Their names are Arianna, Daniele, Paolo e Gastone, Monica, Livia e Simone, Roberto, Gianni, Antonella. They will be our local interlocutors, and, as caretakers, they will carry forward the legacy of what the community of EASA will leave in Amatrice.

Desires

Government-managed reconstruction plans left desires unheard. Because of their simplicity, the aim of this event is to find a space for them. Together with Places and People, the Desiresthat inhabitants express complete our formula. These desires should be thought of as a beginning, a spark for personal interpretation and sensibility, to be merged, transformed, and then rationalised into a workshop proposal.

 

“There was a stage here. I used to perform with the accordion when we had our countryside fe-festivals. Then we made doughnuts stivals. and cooked good food. Nobody comes here anymore now.”

 

“We’d like some benches, where the old take some rest and the children play together.”

 

“The young generations need to get closer to the historic centre. They are losing connection to the territory. Will they ever get back when they are old?”

 

“We want to explore ways to track and remember what is happening in Amatrice. How can we archive its present?”

Terremosse

Do you want to partecipate to Terremosse architecture festival as a helper? Check this form and send us your application!