Super bright two-room flat for rent (Affittasi luminosissimo bilocale) is not one more real estate ads, but a site-specific exhibition staged in Milan by spazioSERRA. The project, designed by Zeroscena and Silvia Francis Berry, exposes the housing crisis in Italian cities. Milan included. Young people are the first to pay the price. Thousands of students and precarious workers have to deal with astonishing rents. Astonishing both in terms of costs and conditions, since those flats are often true slums. Despite their captivating descriptions, such as “super bright two-room flat for rent”.
SpazioSERRA created a fake two-room flat with cardboard furniture and other scrap materials, drawing the planimetry on the floor. After the exhibition, all the objects will be returned to the people who lend them for the initiative or made available for free. Here, art denounces a social problem, but also promotes sustainability with this small circular economy.
A series of real house ads anticipates and guides the exhibition path. SpazioSERRA’s two-room flat has more or less the same characteristics as the flats in the real estate ads. A narrow and cramped space, where kitchen, toilet and (too) many beds are crammed together. An environment you can’t call home, where everything is out of proportion. The price out of the quality, but also out of the average income of those who must inhabit it.
Thus, the “super bright two-room flat” becomes a metaphor of a generation of nomads and temps. Not by choice, but because unable to establish roots.
