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Ralf stayed here after a journey to Matera in Southern Italy.
The Sassi, which are now a part of Matera, were once a separate municipality.
They are placed on a huge tuff hill range. In the early 80s when Ralf came here,
the Sassi were virtually empty, like a ghost town. The inhabitants had been
forceably evacuated and moved to the new town of Matera in the 1950s because
the Sassi were regarded as unfit for human habitation.
About twenty years ago the German occupied a house in the Sassi and adopted it to his purposes. What does he do here? Everything you can imagine - above all he works with his hands. He tells us of the master craftsmen from whom he has learned his various crafts. It was here that he started working with tuff. He has made knowledge about organic ways of building with tuff and the use of tuff houses his own, old knowledge which is threatened in the Sassi by cement and concrete. |
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