ALAgroup, Guglielmo and Passaro Document Life in Abandoned Rome Factory

The research collective ALAgroup, along with Gloria Guglielmo and Marco Passaro, have documented the informal inhabitation of the former Penicillina Leo factory on the outskirts of Rome. This abandoned pharmaceutical complex, once a center of international drug production, has been deserted since the early 2000s and now houses around five hundred people, including entire families. Through photography and storytelling, the project explores what it means to live outside mainstream society. The first occupants likely arrived in 2011, but the population has grown rapidly in the last two years. Newcomers are cleaning sheds, creating communal spaces, bars, and shops, fostering a micro-economy where skills and goods are exchanged. Residents cook for themselves and for income, sell surplus firewood, and build furniture or homes for others. Despite this, it is not a stable community but a forced coexistence due to lack of alternatives. One resident described it as "a jungle life," yet forms of solidarity exist. The inhabitants are rendered invisible, likened to the abandoned pharmaceutical waste, a phenomenon of collective removal that widens the gap between them and society. The work was published in Artribune Magazine #42.