Roberta

Her hands are very fascinating. She moves them as if they are made of velvet, but when she touches mine lightly I can feel they are not so soft as I thought. Roberta gesticulates while she is talking about something that she loves: her hands are the secret language of her mind. So when she tells me about her father her hands tie together and rest in a sort of closed hug. Her father has died. Roberta is still a young architect but she has already worked with some of the most important Italian architects like Renzo Piano and Mario Cucinella. That’s why it was strange to me that she has not her own home yet. Something has changed after her father’s dead and after she broke up with her fiancé. By now her home is made of red bricks only, in a complex of buildings created by her. Roberta is literally creating a new area in Salerno based on the values of sustainability and shared places. In its core there’s her home.

It’s a cloudy day when she brings me in the construction site. I expect her home to be in a large building set apart. I’m surprised when Roberta leads me to an apartment, a tiny one. She sits down and smiles: “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Her hands start to draw imaginary lines in the air: the kitchen, a big window, the design shower. Her home is made just by bricks but tells a lot about Roberta. The naiveté of the wall’s line, the choice to live in a complex created by her and, moreover, to occupy a tiny apartment from where you can see the theatre. It’s like her favourite toy, a wooden house which hosts beloved treasures.