For us, these houses are a game. We have fun playing hide and seek inside them and exploring. But it’s too bad, because such big houses could be used to build factories to give people work, or a nursery for little kids, or a nursing home for old people and other people in need!

We grew up with the desire to build our own house. We knew that we would have to make great sacrifices, but that they would surely be worth it.

Walking around these buildings, I see countless dreams and projects that have yet to be achieved. The unfinished work prevents them from being completed as desired. This is the way it is in Salento, where sacrifices become stones that, one after another, collect the bitter sweat and hopes of those who only wish to fulfill their life objectives.

HOMES ON HOLD - Traces of Unfulfilled Dreams
Benteli Publishing and Chambre Noire
English - Italian
Hardcover - Offset color
19 x 24 cm - 176 pages - 105 analog illustrations
First edition January 2023
Signed copy CHF 40.-

A visual reflection on the poetry of the uncompleted.
At first glance, this book may seem to merely be a collection of the many unauthorized, unfinished and abandoned houses that very strikingly characterize the barren landscape of the Salento peninsula in southern Italy. They lend rhythm to the landscape, incorporating it and participating in its transformation. Upon closer look, these Homes on Hold provoke reflections that are addressed on an anthropological-cultural and socio-economic level in this book, via architecture and esthetics, as to the existential foundations of life plans and their fragility.

BOOK DESIGN
Dennis Moya - Gabriel Mauron

TEXTS
Francesca Giofrè - Sapienza University of Rome, faculty of Architecture, Department Architettura and Design
Fabio Quici - Sapienza University of Rome, faculty of Architecture, Department of History, Representation and Restoration of Architecture
Anna Bruna Menghini - Sapienza University of Rome, faculty of Architectural and Urban Design
Mariangela Turchiarulo - Polytechnic University of Bari, faculty of Architectural and Urban Design

Please get in touch at info@gabrielmauron.com if you are interested.

Limited edition poster 50x70 cm from “Homes on hold”.
50 numbered and signed copies // CHF 20.-
Please get in touch at info@gabrielmauron.com if you are interested.