Nestled among the rugged hills of central Italy lies Monastero, a small village in the municipality of Cessapalombo, in the region of Marche. It’s the kind of place you might miss on a map—quiet, remote, and seemingly untouched by time. With only around seventy houses and fewer than ten year-round residents, Monastero spends most of the year in silence. Yet, each summer, the village stirs to life as hikers, pilgrims, and vacationers pass through on their journeys along the Grande Anello dei Sibillini—a 120-kilometer trekking route around the Sibillini Mountains—and the Cammino Francescano della Marca, a pilgrimage trail connecting Assisi and Ascoli Piceno.
In recent years, the architecture collective Camposaz, in collaboration with local organization Bivio980, turned their attention to this quiet corner of the world. They’ve launched a hands-on, self-build workshop aiming to design and construct a series of wooden structures that invite social interaction, rekindle community spirit, and offer travelers a place to pause and connect.
This isn’t about making headlines with groundbreaking architecture. It’s about building warmth, one bench or gathering space at a time. Camposaz doesn’t arrive with rigid blueprints. Instead, they bring tools, curiosity, and a commitment to co-create—with locals, with the landscape, and with time itself.
Monastero is no stranger to hardship. The 2016 earthquake hit this area hard, compounding the effects of decades of rural depopulation. Many houses still bear the marks of reconstruction. Yet the spirit of the village remains. The Camposaz project is not about restoring Monastero to what it once was, but about imagining what it could become—a place that welcomes people in new ways, that supports spontaneous gatherings and meaningful interactions.
Participants from around the world will arrive in the village not just to build, but to listen, observe, and engage. They’ll be designing simple but thoughtful installations—perhaps a small lookout platform facing the valley, or a shaded resting point for hikers. The process is collaborative from start to finish, with local residents actively involved in sharing their ideas, needs, and stories.
Anna, a young architect from Berlin who previously joined a Camposaz workshop in the Austrian Alps, described her experience like this:
“It was the first time I truly felt architecture wasn’t just lines on a page, but a dialogue between people and place. We were building a wooden seating platform on a hillside. Elderly villagers helped carry the beams, kids ran around us, and the whole thing felt like a celebration of community.”
That same spirit will guide the Monastero project. The aim isn’t to impose design, but to reveal what’s already there—to amplify the village’s quiet voice through small, meaningful interventions.
In a previous Camposaz project, Marc, a designer from Lyon, created a “message wall” in a rural French village. It had a mail slot, a chalkboard, and a space for public notes.
“People wrote greetings, drew pictures, even posted about a lost dog. It became the village’s heartbeat,” Marc recalls.
Projects like these don’t require grand budgets or avant-garde materials—just sensitivity, creativity, and a belief in the power of human connection.
Monastero offers a unique setting for this kind of architecture: one shaped by slowness, silence, and resilience. The structures that emerge from the workshop will likely be modest in size, but rich in meaning. For residents, they represent not just new amenities, but symbols of care and renewed attention. For travelers, they offer an invitation to pause and reflect. And for the participants, they offer something even more powerful—a new way of practicing architecture, one rooted in humility, dialogue, and shared experience.
What Camposaz is doing here is more than building objects. It’s building relationships. It’s redefining what architecture can be in the context of small communities: not an imposition, but a gesture; not a monument, but a meeting point.
The application deadline for this year’s Monastero workshop is June 26, 2025. For young designers looking to step away from the digital rush and reconnect with the tactile, emotional, and communal dimensions of their craft, this could be a rare and meaningful opportunity.
After all, architecture isn't just about shaping space—it’s about shaping belonging. And in Monastero, belonging begins with listening, with hands in the wood, and with stories shared around a newly built bench.