Multiple Sicilian Generations. One Family Business. And Lots of Shared Properties

Photographer Will Pippin grew up in the United States, where, in response to an increasingly unaffordable housing market, intergenerational households and co-ownership by family members or friends have recently become hot topics. But for Pippin, a childhood spent visiting his mother’s cousins and their children in Trapani, Sicily, gave him a window into a shared living setup that’s more rooted in cultural and familial traditions than financial solutions. Living with two generations—three sisters; in total 11 adults and children—in three units in one apartment building and another sister and her two children just down the street near their family-run bakery, Pippin’s cousins were raised in an arrangement that resembled a multigenerational household more than a nuclear one. "They’re comfortable in each place," Pippin says. "It’s like one big house, but still separate apartments."

His mother’s cousins (Pippin calls each zia, or "aunt" in Italian) maintain the family bakery, along with an olive farm in the surrounding countryside, which supplies the olive oil for the bakery, and a shared beach house on Sicily’s northwestern coast. The sisters inherited the properties from their late father—called "Nonno Vito" by the younger generation—who also passed down his former apartment above the bakery (and bought the sisters’ three neighboring units nearly four decades ago). The communal spaces translate to deeply intertwined lives: Though two of the sisters primarily run the business, other family members pop in regularly to help…or sneak a few baked goods. They use the farmhouse for their 20-plus-person family meals during and after full days of picking olives together during harvest season or for outdoor feasts in the summer. It’s exactly what Nonno Vito likely pictured and, to many on the outside, looks like an idyllic life.

But the question of who from the next generation will shepherd the setup is on the horizon, as many of Pippin’s cousins have moved to other Italian cities, where there are more jobs. "Fifty years ago it was a gift to be given the fruits of—literally and figuratively—your family’s labor," he says. "Now, it’s more complex." In the fall, Pippin visited his family to help during the olive harvest. He also documented how their fluid arrangements allow their tight-knit structure to function—and reflect the tensions many families experience adapting to cultural shifts that impact whether their domestic traditions are livable today.