BeforePlaces

A disused basketball court isn't a ruin: it's an expired promise. Someone built it so the neighborhood would have a place to meet, and for a while it may even have worked. That's exactly where BeforePlaces begins. Together with illustrators, comic artists and designers, and with the kids who grew up on that court, we redraw the entire surface and hand it back to the neighborhood. In the end the court is still a court. It's just that now people come back to it.

The name points to the moment we care about: the one before. A space becomes a place when someone looks at it long enough to understand what it could be, and finds a way to let others see it too; that's where the real work is, the rest is execution. Which is why the intervention is never only aesthetic: a redrawn court is a reason to return, and whoever returns brings someone else along. The project is built to move from city to city, taking each time the name of the one hosting it. But the thing that lasts isn't the design on the asphalt. It's the Saturday afternoon when the court is full again.

Learn more: www.beforeplaces.it