Presentation of Abitare (Pulcinoelefante Edition 2025) by Prashanth Cattaneo (curator) and Simone Sapia (photographer), the authors of 1EURO, the cultural project they launched and curated on the theme of depopulation.
Isabella Maggioni (art historian) will moderate the event, which will feature the authors Prashanth Cattaneo and Simone Sapia.
During the evening, a selected photograph created for the event will be presented to the public—printed in a signed and numbered edition.

In 2023, sociologist Bertram Niessen published Abitare il vortice. Come le città hanno perduto il senso e come fare per ritrovarlo (UTET, 2023), an essay that brings together field research, academic literature, and reflections by both Italian and international scholars. It explores the transformation of cities, the lives of citizens, and the actions of consumers who temporarily use urban services without actually living there.
Gentrification, touristification, overtourism, foodification, these are global phenomena at the center of international debate. While cities around the world are changing and continue to do so in terms of urban planning and social structure, Italy’s provinces, from North to South, are undergoing similar transformations, with widespread effects such as depopulation and touristification.
Today, the theme of living is a priority for public and private institutions, researchers, and civil society alike. We need visionary policies capable of slowing down these phenomena and urgent solutions, because without residents, without inhabitants, it is impossible to imagine and design livable places.
The phenomenon of the “1-euro homes” is the direct result of this decades-long history. Several authors have addressed the topic, as it represents a tangible effect of urban transformation and housing policies that often result in inequality, depopulation, and abandoned buildings.
The project that Simone Sapia and Prashanth Cattaneo aim to develop brings together photography and critical writing on equal footing, to tell the stories of depopulation and residential abandonment in Italy starting from Mussomeli (Caltanissetta), Sapia’s hometown.
The Pulcinoelefante edition features a selection of photographs of homes in Sicily. The visual approach embraces a cinematic aesthetic, blending formal precision with emotional depth, and avoiding stereotypical representations. The color images create a visual narrative attentive to detail, to the silent expression of objects.
This is not a didactic work, but a suggestive storytelling that seeks to convey the soul of worlds perhaps forgotten, certainly ignored by many.
Every object discovered – a chair, a book, a painting – becomes a trace of memory, a personal story intertwined with the present, with the lives of those still inhabiting these towns, and with the questions we all ask ourselves—those of us who love our land and feel a deep connection to its places.