Bosco Colto 2026: Sicilian Village Explores Human-Animal Divide
The Bosco Colto 2026 campus in Santo Pietro, Sicily, hosts the Thinking with Animals event, exploring ecological regeneration and nonhuman architecture.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- Bosco Colto hosts its annual 2026 campus in Santo Pietro, Sicily.
- The Thinking with Animals theme explores architecture through a nonhuman lens.
- Yoshiharu Tsukamoto from Atelier Bow-Wow helps construct permanent installations.
- New wood-fired ceramic kiln and Casa Bosco Colto research center unveiled.
In and around the forests of Santo Pietro, near Caltagirone in southeastern Sicily, Italy, lies Bosco Colto, an ecological regeneration project established in 2022 by Makramè APS. Through interdisciplinary programming, the organization explores the Bosco di Santo Pietro area and develops new ways of inhabiting and caring for the territory. In the summer of 2026, it invited guests and community members to participate in its annual Bosco Colto Campus, a summer session of workshops and activations taking place across the village of Santo Pietro.
Titled Thinking with Animals, this year's edition welcomed prominent practitioners such as Yoshiharu Tsukamoto of Atelier Bow-Wow, Food Hack Lab, and other experts in academia, design, and architecture. Through experiments in architecture, agroecology, ceramics, sound, and spatial practices, the program explored environmental justice through a nonhuman lens. In conversation with organizers, co-director Marco Navarra discussed the program's growth and what was cultivated both literally and philosophically during the event.
The post-anthropocene framework and the exploration of nonhuman perspectives represent a vital shift in contemporary design. By decentering human dominance, architects and designers seek ways to let built environments coexist harmoniously with nature. Adapting traditional concepts like Japan's Satoyama to the Sicilian landscape highlights a rich cross-cultural exchange of ecological wisdom.
From late July through early August, the Bosco Colto Campus featured Fabio Ciaravella’s workshop titled Order of the Oaks of Santo Pietro, focusing on the ancient relationship between forests and cities. The program also brought to life a hybrid wood-fired train kiln for experimental ceramics alongside audio, digital, and culinary explorations of the surrounding environment.
"became a living research tool, where design was transformed from a mere formal exercise into a situated practice, capable of embracing the unexpected, other presences and the logics of the non-human world as an integral part of the process."
Marco Navarra
A standout workshop during the late-summer program was Yoshiharu Tsukamoto’s Sicilian Satoyama, where participants collectively constructed the Zucca Gazebo and Mulberry Canopy as permanent site installations. Navarra explained that Satoyama represents Japan's traditional agricultural landscape where various forms of land use coexist in balance, supported by a dedicated social care system. Tsukamoto’s team experimented with applying these local materials to build within the network of elements defining a Sicilian Satoyama.
Alongside the campus, Casa Bosco Colto continues to develop its permanent infrastructure as a network of buildings and outdoor spaces in Santo Pietro. The 2026 campus inaugurated a wood-fired ceramic kiln, marking a permanent addition to the village. Broader plans to redevelop four public buildings into connected cultural infrastructure are currently underway, creating an independent research center equipped with laboratories and guest accommodations for field research.
Source: designboom
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