Moving

Building is a real moving job. Companies and workers move from one construction site to another based on the customer’s requirements. They also move abroad, today just like in the past, when seasonal mobility deprived many villages of workforces and caused a local population drain.
“Every village, each in its own way, is the sum of destruction, preservation, innovation. The sum of fulfilled projects and of failures. Of memory and myth. Of the stories and relationships between people, with their ability in producing, creating, change. Of the fury, the distraction or the benevolence of history and nature. Of ancient migrations. We have known exodus mainly, even recently, and it still hurts”
(Leonardo Zanier, “Trasformare il vuoto in pieno” - Transform empty to full, in Cantîrs).

Friulian entrepreneurs abroad

There are many significant business experiences of Friulians who have created their own companies abroad. They are the often anonymous authors of very popular work all over the world. “The building ability of the Friulians is visible both in the works in their homeland and in the transmission of a “material culture” of the construction trade; migration has given visibility to their competence and excellence in faraway built territories” (Anna Frangipane, Countries, buildings and materials as an instrument of identity value acquisition of their places of origin. An educational path of construction aimed at the grandchildren of the Friulian migrants in Latin America).

Building sites like a modern Babel

Just like the work yards, people inside them are constantly moving, because each building yard is temporary and workers of different origin stream into it. Just like a modern Babel, the site livens up with the different languages, the various attitudes and methods, with the twine of competence and stories that make “here” the product of many “elsewhere”.