Larderello: the Board Game

This work activates decision-making processes, dilemmas and conflicts echoing the contrasting socio-economic narratives of de-industrialisation and automation, coupled with depopulation and worker migration. The Board Game focuses on the village of Larderello in the Devil’s Valley in Tuscany where sustainable energy production was invented in the early 1900s and the first geothermal power station in the world was built. Until recently, five thousand workers and their families lived there in a group of iconic modernist industrial villages constructed by the Italian modernist architect Giovanni Michelucci around the power plant. Following the introduction of automated and remote operation technologies in the power plant, unemployment increased and prospects for the young became limited resulting in the rapid depopulation or abandonment of entire villages. The Board Game is designed for two players or teams, it is presented in two languages and consists of several hundred hand-made components, such as game tiles and instruction cards. This work is part of the project Children of Unquiet (2013-2014).