Un
giardino lungo come un fiume
(You may want to read the English version after this Italian one)
Testo pubblicato in Garten Land NRW 02/2017
The second edition of the EGHN-Magazine is likely to be published in April 2017. The thematic focus will be on “art and culture in parks and gardens”. The “View from abroad” on North Rhine-Westphalia will be written by an Italian landscape architect.
Una
riva d'erba, un fiume grande, cavalli sdraiati al sole, una fontana
barocca, una lago, un bosco, una stella tracciata nel bosco, una
fabbrica, carbone, un prato fino, un tronco senza vita, un campo di
grano, uno stagno-specchio, una torre, la corte di un castello, un
tiglio dentro la corte, il suo profumo riempie l'aria -sono in
viaggio- esco di nuovo alla campagna e poi ancora al bosco, sono
arrivato dove il fiume Reno comincia ad aprirsi al mare. Sono lontano
da casa mia.
Sono
venuto dall'Italia per visitare alcuni giardini della Renania del
Nord, guidato da un amico. Tutto ciò che mi passa davanti si fonde
nell'immagine di un unico giardino dai contorni confusi che non
voglio però ancora definire.
"L'apprendimento
avviene per combinazione del nuovo con ciò che esiste già nella
mente", così ci dice un amico a cena questa sera.
Nell'arco
di una settimana scorrono davanti ai miei occhi 14 paesaggi diversi*
che si combinano progressivamente l'uno accanto all'altro in un modo
sempre meno confuso. Si combinano fino a creare una preziosa
"palette" immaginaria di strumenti compositivi. Strumenti
che escono dal loro spazio assegnato -i loro contorni si fondono-
senza perdere la propria identità: ognuno di questi strumenti sfuma,
forse, per affermare la propria riconoscenza all'altro. Strumenti
compositivi che attraversano i secoli e mi raccontano la storia del
giardino nella regione a nord del fiume Reno.
Aiutato
da uno strano stato di sogno in cui cado ad ogni spostamento, dovuto
al caldo di un'estate finalmente arrivata e al comfort dell'auto,
confondo nomi e forme e, nonostante il fido quaderno di viaggio, mi
accorgo semplicemente di passare da un habitat all'altro, da un suolo
sabbioso ad uno argilloso, da un'insolazione totalmente aperta di un
campo di grano, alla semi ombra di una stradina di campagna, e la
campagna vasta che mi si apre davanti e i boschi fitti da cui tutti i
giardini di questa regione sono nati e di cui sembra non possano fare
a meno.
Sono
in bicicletta ora e scopro il gioco delle spighe di grano dentro i
pantaloni; la spiga messa sotto l'orlo dei pantaloni di un compagno;
un gioco da bambini mi dice il mio amico Wolfgang; provo e mi
grattero' per tutto il giorno: la memoria fissa un particolare
insieme alla sua geografia. L'infanzia di altri, il paesaggio di
altri dove spero di riuscire ad entrare. È un viaggio lungo alcuni
secoli in un giardino grande quanto un'intera regione e ciò che è
cominciato è il racconto di un'appartenenza.
Poco
mi importano allora i nomi e le forme specifiche dei paesaggi che
incontro, quando ciò che emerge agli occhi è una chiara permanenza
di segni e una fedeltà ad essi dichiarata nei secoli.
Questo
mi racconta molte cose.
I
cavalli selvatici sono sdraiati sulla spiaggia del Reno, dormono
accanto ad un gruppo di buoi che fa il bagno. Sono nel XXI secolo e
per accorgermene li chiamo e li guardo mentre si svegliano e si
raccolgono insieme per iniziare un nuovo gioco. Mai avrei pensato di
cominciare da una spiaggia assolata...
Ma il punto è proprio
questo: come introdurre la Natura nella "forma costruita"
della tradizione artistica della nostra storia europea? Come aprire
la necessità della forma del nostro creare, ad una natura che non sa
tenersi (come potrebbe?) in una forma conclusa?
È
questa la forma che nel tiergarten di Kleve era stata data alla
collina creando una stella prospettica nel bosco per vedere le mosse
dei cervi, forma che ora il tempo ha restituito alla Natura
intessendo la sua stella insieme ai rami di splendidi faggi.
Una
sfida è contenuta in quella domanda e tentare di dare risposte è la
grande opportunità per creare laboratori di un nuovo paesaggio. Gli
strumenti sono lì davanti.
Mi
distraggo un attimo, sto pensando all'Italia. Troppo intenso è stato
il Rinascimento nell'affermazione del valore della forma per
consentire ai nostri occhi contemporanei un'apertura indolore della
forma alla natura. La rappresentazione teatrale del potere si è
espressa al suo apice nei giardini dei palazzi cinquecenteschi
diffondendosi nelle infinite sue declinazioni nelle corti di tutta
Europa per secoli. Insieme allo spegnersi dello spettacolo dei
palazzi si è anche conclusa quella stretta fedeltà alla
rappresentazione formale e la forma ha appreso a diventare un po' più
disponibile ad aprirsi a ciò che non può contenere.
Fuori
di quello spettacolo comincia la natura con la sua forza e la
necessità, per noi, di conoscerla. Non è una lezione facile né
tantomeno ovunque compresa. Per fortuna tra gli strumenti del fare
paesaggio c'è la pazienza, quella necessaria a spiegare che la
natura un po' selvatica non deve fare paura e che un'apertura ad essa
fa cominciare un'opportunità grandiosa per la definizione di un
paesaggio davvero adeguato alle sfide ecologiche, sociali, ed
economiche della nostra contemporaneità.
Forse
occorre imparare a seguire ciò che del rapporto con la natura più
permane ed è più ricco di conseguenze. Penso alla mia tradizione
culturale e penso che occorra apprendere da altri luoghi come seguire
il filo rosso di tale rapporto e mi ritrovo di nuovo lungo il fiume
Reno dove mi si apre alla vista la sfida meravigliosa dell'uso di
spazi industriali abbandonati.
Cammino
in parchi aperti dove la forma non fa in tempo ad imporsi e lascia il
posto alle suggestioni che la natura incontra nel farsi spazio tra
gli oggetti di un costruito abbandonato. Parchi che hanno imparato la
lezione di nascere intorno a cose preesistenti senza arrogarsi il
diritto di assumere senso alcuno al di fuori del proprio semplice
esistere in qualità di spazi verdi laddove il passato era stato
ostile alla natura. Saranno i cittadini poi a creare il parco con la
loro presenza.
Ho
la sensazione, per un momento, di una vicinanza in cui questi parchi
si tengono, più di quanto forse si immagini, rispetto ai giardini di
caccia nati due secoli prima per un bisogno di gioco e liberta'
rintracciabile solo nella natura del bosco e anche rispetto ai parchi
del IXX secolo dove già la forma non si presupponeva più come poco
tempo prima. Kleve accosta una sensazione all'altra in pochi metri.
È
questo il filo rosso. Una regione intera lentamente si è aperta alla
natura, sfuggendo alla misura geometrica della forma nelle giornate
di caccia a cavallo attraverso i tiergarten, e qualche tempo dopo,
fermandosi sul bordo di un laghetto a guardare rispecchiarsi le
novità d'oltre Manica, e infine giungendo ad insistere su un inutile
accidente di ferro e cemento intorno al quale finalmente si e' in
grado di aprire le porte al lato selvatico del mondo e firmare un
nuovo patto con la natura.
Il
viaggio sta volgendo al fine, il fiume scorre ad unire i boschi e la
campagna, a rinnovarne quel senso e quella funzione che tiene insieme
le città di questa regione. È lungo il fiume che trovo la fonte di
ogni combinazione leggibile per gli strumenti della palette da cui
nascono i giardini che ho visitato. È lungo il fiume che questi
strumenti si manifestano quali permanenze nel territorio: sono quelle
stradine lungo i fossi nella campagna, sono i filari di querce, i
ruscelli, gli stagni, i boschi, il falco che attraversa il bosco di
Alnus glutinosa, tutte figure di una familiarità che dal
territorio non possono staccarsi e dal suo uso fedele apprendono a
durare, con forme diverse, ma sempre segni costanti di
un'appartenenza.
La
ragione di tale fedeltà esiste; occorre mantenere viva la sua
lettura per non perdere la strada.
Penso
di aver fatto bene a svegliare i cavalli sulla spiaggia del Reno. Il
mio amico Wolfgang mi ha fatto notare una cosa: i cavalli dormono
anche sdraiati; non lo sapevo. Chi racconta che i cavalli dormono
solo in piedi forse non ha conosciuto il giardino che nel sonno
quelle rive aprono a chi vi si avvicina.
*
Rheinpark, Duisburg
Klever Gartenlandschaft, Kleve (EGHN)
Theetuinen, Millingen (NL)
Schloss Moyland, Bedburg-Hau (EGHN)
Sculpturpark Waldfrieden, Wuppertal (EGHN)
Nordsternpark, Gelsenkirchen (EGHN)
Maximilianpark, Hamm (EGHN)
Botanischer Garten, Münster (EGHN)
Aasee/Promenade, Münster (EGHN)
Haus Hüshoff, Havixbeck (EGHN)
Krickenbecker Seen / De Wittsee, Naturpark Schwalm-Nette, Nettetal-Hinsbeck
Garten Alst, Thorsten Matschiess, Brüggen-AlstNursery Höfkes, Kempen
Nursery Hortus, Peter Jahnke, Hilden
English version
A garden as long as a river
(translated by the sweetest Amelia Linsky)
Text published in Garten Land NRW 02/2017
The second edition of the EGHN-Magazine is likely to be published in April 2017. The thematic focus will be on “art and culture in parks and gardens”. The “View from abroad” on North Rhine-Westphalia will be written by an Italian landscape architect.
A
grassy shore, a great river, horses basking in the sun, a Baroque
fountain, a lake, a wooded grove, a perpsective star traced in the
grove, a factory, coal, a thin lawn, a lifeless trunk, a field of
grain, a pool-mirror, a tower, the courtyard of a castle, a lime tree
inside the courtyard, its perfume filling the air - I am traveling.
I
go out again to the countryside and then to the woods. I have arrived
where the Rhine begins to open itself to the sea. I am far from home.
I
came from Italy to visit certain gardens of the North-Rhine, guided
by a friend. Everything that passes before me is founded in the image
of a single garden, the confused borders of which, however, I still
do not want to define.
“Learning
occurs through a combination of the new with that which already
exists in the mind”, as a friend tells us at dinner that night.
Over
the course of a week, 14 diverse landscapes*
pass before my eyes, progressively coinciding, one then another, with
an increasingly apparent logic. They combine until they create a
precious, imaginary “palette” of compositional tools. Tools that
come out of their assigned space - their borders melt - without
losing their own identity: each one of these tools fades, perhaps, in
order to affirm its gratitude toward its neighbor. Compositional
tools that span centuries and that tell me the story of the garden in
this region north of the Rhine.
Encouraged
by the long-awaited heat of summer, and by the comfort of the car, I
fall into a strange dreaming state at every relocation. I confuse
names and forms and, despite my faithful travel journal, I realize
only that I am passing from habitat to another, from sandy soil to
clay, from the open sunshine of a grain field, to the half-shade of a
country lane, and the vast countryside that opens up before me and
the thick woods from which all the gardens of this region are born,
and from which they cannot help but be born.
I
am bicycling now and I discover the game of the climbing head of
grain; if a head of grain is placed inside the hem of one's trousers,
it will climb up to the knee and create an incredible itch! A child's
game, says my friend Wolfgang; I tried, and I was scratching for the
whole day: the memory fixes a certain totality within its geography.
The childhood of others, the landscape of others where I hope to
enter in. It is a voyage through centuries in a great garden, as much
as a whole region, and what has begun is the story of a belonging. So
then the names and specific forms of these landscapes do not matter
that much, when that which emerges before my eyes is a clear
permanence of signs and a faithfulness to them, declared through the
centuries.
This
tells me many things.
The
wild horses are basking along the beach of the Rhine, they sleep
beside a herd of oxen wading in the water. I am in the twenty-first
century and to remind mysef of this, I call them, and I watch as they
awaken and gather together to begin a new game. Never would I have
thought to begin from a sun-drenched shore...
But
this is exactly the point: how to introduce nature into the
“constructed form” of the artistic tradition of our European
history? How to open up the necessity of the form of our creation to
a nature that knows not how to hold itself (how could it?) in a fixed
form?
This
is the form that in the Tiergarten of Cleves was given to the hill,
creating a perspective star out of open spaces in the copse to reveal
the movements of the deer, a form that now time has restored to
nature, weaving its star together with the boughs of splendid
beeches.
A
challenge is contained in this question and the attempt to find a
response is the great opportunity to create, to experiment in a new
landscape. The tools are here before us.
I'm
distracted for a second, I am thinking about Italy. The Renaissance
had been too intense in its affirmation of the value of the form to
allow our modern eyes to open easily to the forms of nature. The
theatrical representation of power was expressed, at its apex, in the
gardens of sixteenth-century palaces, diffusing its infinite
variations into the courts of all of Europe for centuries. Along with
the fading of the spectacle of these palaces, that strict
faithfulness to formal representation was concluded; and the form
learned to become a little more willing to open itself to that which
it could not contain.
Outside
of that spectacle begins nature and its strength, and the necessity,
for us, to begin to know it. It is not an easy lesson nor yet
understood everywhere. Fortunately, among the tools of
landscape-shaping there is patience, necessary to explaining that
nature that's a little bit wild should not inspire fear, and that an
opening to it begins a great opportunity to define a landscape which
is truly adaptable to the ecological, social, and economic challenges
of our time.
Maybe
it is necessary to learn to follow that which of our relationship
with nature most persists, and which is most rich in consequence. I
am thinking about my cultural tradition and I think that it is
necessary to learn from other places how to follow the common thread
of such a rapport, and I find myself again along the Rhine river,
where the marvelous challenge of using abandoned industrial spaces
opens up before me.
I
walk in open parks where the form cannot impose itself in time and
leaves space for nature's suggestions as it makes
itself a space among the remnants
of an abandoned building. Parks that learned how to grow
around pre-existing things without presuming any
sense whatsoever outside of their own
simple existence as green spaces, there
where the past had been hostile to nature.
It will be the citizens, then, to create
the park with their presence.
For
a moment, I sense the nearness of
these parks, more than that which perhaps one imagines, to the
hunting preserves born two centuries ago of a need for play and for
freedom retraceable only to the nature of the woods, and also to the
parks of the ninteenth century, where already the form did not
presuppose itself, as it had just a short time before. At Cleves, one
sensation approaches another within a few meters.
This
is the common thread. A whole region slowly
opening itself to nature, fleeing the geometric measurements of form
of the days of hunting on horseback in the
Tiergarten, and some time later, stopping at the border of a little
lake to view the new fashions in greenery reflected from across the
Channel, and finally reaching the useless
accident of iron and cement around which, finally, it
is able to open the doors to the wild side of the world and to sign a
new pact with nature.
The
trip is reaching its end, the river runs to unite the woods and the
fields, to renew that sense and that function that hold together the
cities of this region. It is from the riverbed that every legible
combination of the tools of the palette for all
these gardens is born. It is along the river that these tools
have engraved ancient signs in the territory: they
are those lanes along which run the ditches of the countryside, they
are the rows of oaks, streams, the ponds, the woods, the falcon that
crosses the alder grove, all figures of a familiarity that cannot
remove itself from the territory, and which learn to endure by
faithful use of the land, with diverse forms, but always constant
signs of belonging.
There
is a reason for such faithfulness; it is necessary to keep reading
this Reason in order not to lose our way.
I
think that I did well to awaken the horses on the shore of the Rhine.
My friend pointed out something to me: horses can also sleep lying
down; I had not known this. Whoever says that horses only sleep on
their feet has perhaps not yet met the garden which, in sleep, those
shores open up to those who come by.
*
Rheinpark,
Duisburg
Klever
Gartenlandschaft, Kleve (EGHN)
Theetuinen,
Millingen (NL)
Schloss
Moyland, Bedburg-Hau (EGHN)
Sculpturpark
Waldfrieden, Wuppertal (EGHN)
Nordsternpark,
Gelsenkirchen (EGHN)
Maximilianpark,
Hamm (EGHN)
Botanischer
Garten, Münster (EGHN)
Aasee/Promenade,
Münster (EGHN)
Haus
Hüshoff, Havixbeck (EGHN)
Krickenbecker
Seen / De Wittsee,
Naturpark Schwalm-Nette, Nettetal-Hinsbeck
Garten
Alst,
Thorsten Matschiess,
Brüggen-AlstNursery Höfkes,
Kempen
Nursery
Hortus, Peter Jahnke, Hilden
....................................................................................................
a Wood called Claudio Abbado
Ready for Christmas 2015 the new born little Wood Claudio Abbado is glooming in the winter fog of my city Ferrara, Italy: pear, apple, quince trees and oak, acer, elm trees to embrace a vulnerable neighbourhood.
Here you will discover what it is all about.
(translated by the sweetest Amelia Linsky)
Thinking
about “The Great Clod” by
Albrecht Dürer
We
are in 1503 and Dürer, at 32 years old, is painting some tall
grasses.
Two years
later, during his second trip to Italy, Dürer
is in Ferrara, where he visits the construction site of Biagio
Rossetti's fortifications. He is gathering elements for his study on
the defense of the city, to be developed in subsequent years and
published in 1527 as a treatise entitled:
Etliche
underricht zu Befestigung der Stett, Schloss und Flecken (Some
instructions for fortifying towns, castles and small cities)
It
is a treatise written for the purpose of defense.
The
art of war had changed dramatically with the appearance of firearms,
becoming an almost unknown discipline for the first time in
centuries. Firearms decrease
physical contact and introduce
the invisible and the loud. The
psychological impact of fear when faced with something invisible and
loud is paralyzing.
The
appearance of these previously unknown psychological factors was
accompanied by another discovery: the old defensive apparatuses for
the city, the walls, were suddenly revealed to be inadequate.
The
high walls were no longer useful: cannonballs did not go very high,
but were more terribly powerful than battering rams had ever been. A
low hit, so destructive that one could not resist it, only attempt to
soften it, absorbing it into the mass of the wall. In the best-case
scenario, this resistance avoided even being hit. The walls had to be
relatively low, very thick, and possibly have an uneven profile to be
more difficult to hit. A new form, an
appropriate form, had
to be found.
It is
this form that the Duke of Este and his architect Rossetti were
discussing, and this form that the young Dürer arrived to study at
the construction of the new fortifications of Ferrara.
A
thirty-two-year-old man
A
32-year-old man walks in a field of wildflowers, takes up a clod of
earth, and brings it to his study to paint it.
Dürer
chooses that most
delicate of existence, blades of grass, and at the same time mentally
cultivates a study (then, perhaps, only a vague idea) dedicated to
the defense of cities.
This
propels the watercolor well beyond the virtuosity of a still life.
Dürer
succeeds
in
uniting two such distinct worlds: blades of grass and fortifications:
that which is dear to us alongside that with which we defend it.
Dürer's
times necessitated new defenses of the city, and with such urgency
that he dedicated a portion of his life to it. They were times
certainly not concerned with environmental crisis, but
contemporaneously with that urgency of defense, some fragile blades
of grass became his best
watercolor.
That
small canvas of 31 cm by 40 cm speaks of a profound sense of beauty
conceived by an intelligence capable of applying the verb to protect
at every scale, from the smallest to the largest.
And
this is what brings Dürer's watercolor closer to us than we
imagine.
“The
Great Clod” speaks to us about a suspended state of mind, between a
sense of fragility and the urgency of defending it; a state of mind
so present and diffuse within us that just a few blades of grass can
evoke it. We need to defend something beyond the walls of the city,
something that involves the entire environment in which we live: our
urgency has become one and the same with our idea of Ecology.
A
closer
look at “The Great Clod”
As a
designer, I concentrate on the watercolor and try to understand what
draws me to it.
… I
believe that it is something related to the order
of
those blades of grass.
It is in the less-ordered
order in fields of wildflowers that I feel comfortable; the
less-ordered order where I find my idea of ecological equilibrium.
This lesser-order is the means by
which “The Great Clod” becomes the most fitting representation of
this idea.
I ask
myself if the representation of an idea can succeed in defending that
same idea.
The
history of the garden is the history of a continual alternation of
forms that represented the unique urgencies of
those who created them. The
more coherence between urgency
and
the form that
represented it, the more able the garden to take on meaning, and
endure.
If
there is coherence between urgency and form, the representation of an
idea can defend that same idea.
What
form can best represent our own urgency? What idea of form
and
of order
do
we have when we imagine a park?
Lingering
on that watercolor
If
“The Great Clod” is the most fitting representation
of
my idea of nature, maybe its composite character: that
not-very-ordered order,
can
become an instrument in its design.
Nature
offers us an opportunity to enter into contact with a beauty
whose forms are not traceable to the usual idea of order because they
follow the logic of plants. Plants, when left free to develop,
spontaneously form vegetal communities of great richness. We should
follow the model of these landscapes.
We
must learn to design without falling upon the page from above, but
penciling on paper as though following a path near to a tree-trunk,
following its crown of foliage and imagining it in twenty, forty, one
hundred years... what will happen when the elder leans against the
oak in three years? Almost as though designing were the description
of some place, who knows when or where it was seen, in which we were
happy (these are the layered
landscapes, escaped from the control of design, a hundred, two
hundred years ago, where the park has been returned to a vaster
Nature and its vegetation to Ecology).
The
risk of ignoring the urgency of ecology is that the city parks in
which we live will no longer represent anything for anyone. The risk
is that the urban vegetal landscape multiply in forms around which
there is no sense of belonging because these forms do not defend that
which is most dear to us. And if the sharing
of social habit weakens, it is also
the sense of community held within it that weakens.
The
garden most able to represent our urgency will be a garden able to
mimic
existing
vegetal communities, a garden capable of following the logic of
plants.
The
birth of the
Bosco Claudio Abbado Project
Now
it is necessary to introduce three ideas
learned
during my years of study at college in London.
1
– On arboriculture: voluntarily
abandoned woods;
an
area of temporary experimentation meant for the study of the future
development of existing vegetal groups left in a state of
abandonment.
2
– Urban woods: abandoned areas that have become woods, managed by
the London
Wildlife Trust.
3
– Gilles Clément's
sanctuaries of biodiversity:
urban
areas not involved in the building market or the city infrastructure
that are populated with a great variety of plant species.
These three experiences
bring to light a phenomenon: the Apex of biodiversity.
Now
it is necessary to introduce the meaning behind Ecological
Succession, the
phenomenon according to which plant species, in colonizing a virgin
terrain, succeed each other in the fight for light, water, and
minerals: from the first state in which lichens and mosses
are
the pioneers, one moves to an intermediate state of grasses,
perennial weeds and shrubs, to a final state in which the forest
takes form with its dominant tree species.
Over
the course of this succession the richness of biodiversity, that is,
the richness of the present varieties of animals and plants, which is
not always the same, grows to a peak. This peak is the apex
of biodiversity, or
the highest level of variety of plant and animal species that are
present in that place. This state corresponds to a set of perennial
weeds, shrubs, and trees similar to that which one finds in the
forest edge, that is to say in the first 20 meters between woods and
countryside, the strip of woods richest in light and air.
This
apex of
biodiversity is
a temporary state; the level of biodiversity, in time, will degrade
(into the dominance of some species over others) until it reaches a
condition of stability.
If
one permits plants to develop according to their own logic, allowing
them to form their own vegetal communities, green spaces will succeed
in autonomously generating
the maximum level of biodiversity within themselves.
It is
interesting to ask if it is possible to create a vegetal space able
to reach, in a relatively short time, such an apex of biodiversity
and if, having reached this state, a stable maintenance of this
richness is possible.
The
Bosco
Claudio Abbado is proposed as this
type of landscape.
A
strip of forest edge, 26 meters by 40 meters, imagined as a unified
landscape capable of translating the qualities of a woods into the
urban environment. The Bosco
Claudio Abbado combines
two of these units for a development of 80 meters along the margin of
Ferrara which
is most vulnerable to the effects of pollution, where
the Barco residential quarter meets the industrial area northwest of
the city. A linear wood of 80 meters capable of combining the value
of environmental relief, expressed by a high density of planting,
with the vocation of a public park guaranteed by the high
permeability of walking paths criss-crossing the 26-meter width.
The
vision of the wood
The
vision of the wood for a landscape intervention in the urban
environment is certainly an emotive suggestion. A suggestion,
however, that developed in the understanding of the ecological
dynamics of the wood. Learning the grammar and the syntax of the
woods little by little, one discovers that there exists a fundamental
principal which defines the wood: the density
of planting,
that
is, the relative distances among the plants that comprise it. This
principal informs the quality of the wood independently of its
dimensions: it does not matter whether it is a “vast wood” or a
“small wood”, as soon as one learns of this fundamental of
composition from which stems quality. Conveyed in this project, this
principal of composition allows us to propose the true quality of a
wood at various scales of intervention, permitting the urban space to
accommodate a landscape of great richness.
The
beauty of it: it's contagious
Like the
beauty of “The Great Clod” from which the Wood is born, this
rather wild beauty can become a visual habit, its principals a common
heritage, and thus a less-ordered order can arise from the green
rectangle of the Bosco
Claudio Abbado, to enter into our
gardens and enrich the fragmented private spaces to transform them
into a greater unity.
If, in
fact, we imagine a bird's-eye view of the city of Ferrara, we no
longer notice the walls between garden and garden; we see a single
garden that
spans the entire city.
....................................................................................................
You may want to have a look at its pages and if you bump into the Epilogue you might recognize my writing hand. The Epilogue (the text published below) is my contribution to that Final Report.
Hybrid Parks 2/2
Text written for the final conference of the project Hybrid Parks, Colonia 14, 15, 16 Settembre 2014
(translated by the sweetest Amelia Linsky)
In these two years the Hybrid Parks project as sought the most approriate management for the public parks which comprise a territory more or less as vast as that of Europe. An ambitious project begun with the faith of the enthusiastic; a project that closes, now, with the same faith, but with the discretion that comes with the knowledge of a long and unknown road ahead.
No one of us, at this point, would presume to believe that the Hybrid Park model which he sought exists.
And this is the true success of the whole project: to have removed the seductive tendency to simplification, and to have demonstrated the complexity and the fascination of the European territory.
If the problem to confront is the ecological question, then it is easy. We have all the knowledge to create green spaces adapted to the slow, progressive decline of climatic and ecological variety, the trend of rising temperatures and the scarcity of water.
Technically, it is easy. All we need is attention to the sustainability of plant choices, along with informed planning regarding naturally occurring biological systems, in the creation of somewhat self-sufficient plant communities. Sturdy, resistant plants placed in a plan which mimics natural landscapes, so that the dynamism of those ecological communities enters into the landscape of our cities.
The corollas of dried flowers for insects and birds, to be pruned only in winter, with a notable reduction of expenditures, will bring beauty to cities which no longer expect it, a new aesthetic, in which the plants can finally express their whole life cycle.
Sustainability in the choice of the species, sustainability in planning, and sustainability of management.
We are talking about a culture of green spaces that opens up to a beauty that we're no longer used to, a beauty constructed of formal, yet unusual solutions.
And here the ecological issue opens up a vista that goes beyond the purely aesthetic.
As I was writing I realized that thinking about these unusual methods of planning, capable of following the plants in their natural development, led to another, parallel thought which very gradually took form. I realized that I was looking at plants in a way that I was no longer used to. I realized that concentration on the plant forms necessarily led to thinking about social ones, and that the way of looking at plants became a sort of suggestion of how to open my eyes wider.
Perhaps the understanding of biodiversity contributes a comprehension of the social diversity in our cities.
We discover that that new aesthetic is capable of exceeding the confines of ecology, and tells us something about our parks' potential to adapt better to the dynamic social fabric of our cities; parks capable of allowing that dynamism to express itself without being impoverished.
An aesthetic of ecology which is totally new, simply because only recently have we learned to notice the abandoned patches behind our house, where the plants occupy the space best adapted to them.
At the Ferrara conference last November, I hinted at the risk of not heeding ecological urgency in planning green spaces: the risk, beyond the obvious ecological issues, that the landscape in which we live would cease to represent anything for its inhabitants and that its forms would no longer generate any sense of belonging.
I asked myself, then, what form our landscape should have.
I talked about how, in the first half of the fourteenth century, the frescoed Allegoria del Buon Governo painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti at Siena, exemplified the representation of the landscape most suited to contemporary ideas of well-being, social cohesion, Peace.
In these two years, Hybrid Parks has sought to represent the landscape most reflective of our idea of Peace.
And at the end, the project admits a sort of wistful diffidence, and asks if it must necessarily develop a specific sort of “laboratory model” super-park, or if, instead, we must think about a park privy of predefined form, a park to redefine every time, capable of adapting in any moment, always responsive to what happens inside and around it.
Contemporary Peace, as is now evident everywhere in the world, lives in the successful management of ecological integrity and social cohesion.
A territory's social cohesion depends on the sharing of common values formed around life's fundamental necessities, needs which are the most direct expression of our relationship with the environment.
Sustainability and Peace are identical.
Public spaces are definitively most appropriate to allow the formation and maintenance of urban cohesion because it is therein that sharing may express itself in all its myriad forms, growing without weakness.
The multiplicity of forms in which this sharing manifests itself becomes an important tool for us.
If, at the technical level, as we have seen, the differentiation of management of the green zones guarantees the quality of the biodiversity of a natural environment, then responding to the various needs of those who will use and share public spaces is required. In other words, it is required to to differentiate the opportunities for use of those spaces.
From plants we have passed to people, because society and environment share the same destiny, and both can function only as a unified system.
It is possible to create differentiated public spaces only if one draws on a multiplicity of management techniques capable of satisfying as many needs. This is the spirit of the Hybrid Parks project – the synergy among crafts, businesses, technicians.
Thus we see that “hybrid” and “biodiverse” are effectively synonymous. The same spirit animates them, teaching us to resist every temptation to specialize our gaze. The gaze must maintain its bird's-eye view of the differences, it must remain capable of taking in the diversity of things by seeing them as a unified entity without any reduction or impoverishment.
If we imagine seeing a city from above – as I said back then at Ferrara – blessed with a bird's-eye view, the fragmented totality of its gardens reveals itself as a single garden. Birds do not notice dividing walls between gardens, or whether a plant is in one garden or another... they fly above a single garden as large as the entire city. The rich biodiversity of this single garden is due, simply, to the random variety of the larger and smaller habitats which comprise it, not to the presence of model super-gardens specially designed for biodiversity.
Thus Hybrid Parks did not arrive at a formal model, but the bird's-eye view of the unified totality of each of our material and spiritual needs.
The fact is that we need to dust off our imaginations. At least this is what certain events, as you will hear shortly when I talk about Palermo, have taught me to do.
I believe that Italians may more naturally understand something that other, more orderly and precise cultures have difficulty in recognizing, if they even remember it.
This summer I traveled to Sicily. My plane flew in to Palermo. It was the first city I visited. A masterpiece!
Visiting Palermo is like going to the psychologist: the more you walk, the farther away you drift from familiar things. But at the same time, you feel as though you're coming home, only with a clarity that you never had before.
Walking around historic Palermo, one slowly learns to welcome the chaos of its streets and facades, and at the end of the day, what you see – in a mixture of reality and transfiguration – is a unified totality of formal richness, become a sort of sensation of belonging.
What I called chaos on the day of my arrival, the day after, I called multiplicity. The city appeared to me as a palimpsest. Palermo is a leaf of parchment on which is written a text written upon a preexisting text, scribed centuries earlier and then scratched away to fix a new text upon the sheepskin, without the previous writing being completely lost. The traces remain upon the transparent sheet for us to find.
In Palermo one perceives the resemblance between our lives and that palimpsest where the signs are left upon the surface, all rich with significance. At present those signs appear confused, all in their own space, all with their own fragment of sense, all abiding together and ready to tell us something. One only needs the patience to read them.
And perhaps we, who have begun to notice the beauty of the unkempt lawn behind our house, are becoming more capable of that kind of patience.
This is nature, this is the city, this is us.
Cities have always endured by their care for pre-existing things. The richest and most long-lived civilizations cared for multiplicity. In Sicily, the Normans did it with the Saracens, and the Saracens with the descendants of the Greeks. To deny complexity meant death, to welcome it welcomed also prosperity.
We have always been hybrid.
And so it is necessary to re-train our gaze to the habit of complexity. It must relearn to be hybrid; only then will it be able to see the hybridity of the space around it and able to plan it so it's truly adapted to material and spiritual needs of those who inhabit it, against the temptation to reduce that which we hold to be important in fixing upon a form that presumes to be exemplary.
A palimpsestic landscape capable, too, of losing things by the wayside because, as this experience demonstrates, what is needed often manifests itself outside any planned project.
And so a model hybrid park, a hybrid park par excellence, does not exist. There exist ecological and social needs that must be attended to together, within the specificity of the conditions in which they exist, until the form of the park that is born is their most coherent representation.
Perhaps the hybrid park is that which allows such uses to settle upon the urban layout, a park that takes on meaning just as a formal opportunity for the layering of use, a park able to return the spaces of the city to the needs which present themselves.
This park which welcomes and increases multiplicity of use, by means of an internal differentiation of forms, becomes an instrument of social cohesion. Diverse members of society find the space most appropriate to them because that park reflects them as though it were the form of a habitual use. There, common values express themselves.
I like to think that our hybrid park already exists. It is different from every existing park and yet takes the best of all of them, in a Europe that we know is not more complex than fourteenth-century Siena in the eyes of its citizens.
Hybrid Parks 1/2
Testo scritto, come relatore, in occasione del workshop del progetto Hybrid Parks, Ferrara 6, 7, 8 Novembre 2013
(translated by the sweetest Amelia Linsky)
Hybrid
Parks
and The
Allegory of Good Government
or
“Comb
your grasses at the end of the season...”
Our
topic is
Hybrid
Parks; in Italian, Parchi
Ibridi.
We can even push farther and think about translating the phrase from
spoken language to a visual one, as did Ambrogio Lorenzetti when he
painted The
Allegory of Good Government
on the walls of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, in 1338.
Some
sing and some dance, some go about their business. A
city opens up to the countryside, the people go in and out, some
hunting, some bringing in goods. The city changes into countryside
through
a
strip of orchards and vineyards adjacent to the walls. It is the
image of Peace, an image of diversity and harmony, variety and color.
It is The
Allegory of Good Government.
On the opposite wall, an indistinct
blot,
the gray and brown of
devastated woods and abandoned fields, is
The
Allegory of Bad Government.
The
landscape becomes a way to represent the condition of the city. But,
through the power of allegory, something more happens.
The
allegory is comprised of certain elements: the laughing, dancing
girls, the open windows of the houses, the shops, the cultivated
fields. We identify these things with Peace; they are
Peace.
The allegory establishes the shared identity of Peace and its
Landscape, inspiring a sense of familiarity and belonging in us, the
viewers. This is the power of the allegory: the creation of an
indissoluble unity out of that Landscape and our basic needs. In that
room in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, Peace and the city of the
fourteenth century have
found their perfect
Landscape.
In
Ferrara from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the great
economic and military power of the Estense dukes assumed
a double form.
First,
technologically
advanced weapons to use and to sell to Europe's great powers; second,
the Delizie,
landscaped
palaces
in which the court lived during part of the year. The
garden, in an age of war, grew
out of power and came to represent it.
The
presence of these green areas in today's city
has remained, for the most part, intact. A bird's-eye view reveals
the northeast part of the city colored in unbroken green, and here
transpires an interesting experience.
Here
one wanders through a rare fusion of the sacred and the profane set
amid medieval gardens. Within the perimeter of the walls, the
countryside maintains its proper use, not only its formal persistence
as a venerated area between the Christian and Jewish cemeteries that
have protected its longevity.
Perhaps
Ferrara is particularly suited to host a discussion on Hybrid Parks
since it is familiar with ancient ways of managing public green
spaces in such a way as to make them sources of inspiration. Here we
find, almost incidentally, some roots of the idea of Hybrid Parks.
This
concept,
fitting itself into Time,
takes on a patina of normalcy, of obviousness, which restores to us
the evidence of its most authentic character and richness: diversity.
The Ferrarese perception of normalcy in this regard renders the idea
of the fusion of the urban and the agricultural more familiar, more
customary, and therefore readier
to settle, like rich sediment,
into the minds of everyone crossing these fields. Thus, we aim to
reach the end of the workshop with a sense of rediscovery regarding
the visual and attitudinal obviousness around the meaning of hybrid,
and, with it, the aesthetic need for this type of landscape.
Belonging tout
court.
The plans and projects to be
undertaken in light of this rediscovery, of course, must yet be
invented.
A
garden
–
and every Park is a garden – takes a form which represents the
urgent concerns of he who creates it. Thus, the history of a garden
is a continuous transformation of forms and ideas. It is a theater of
representation with changes at every performance.
We
all know that the urgent concern of ecological change is the dominant
idea of our time. And so it is that we must find an answer to the
question: what is the form of garden suitable for performing this
urgency? I like to think that the garden capable
of
performing
the things closest to our hearts has an uncommon form, following the
plants during their natural development.
The
beauty of it is, in accounting for ecology, one arrives at a point of
never being able to forget it... On the 21st
of December, 1978, the most adventurous of English gardeners,
Christopher Lloyd, wrote that it is a “question of upbringing”:
if
you grow up running in tall grass, nothing less will do.
Nothing
less
than a Beauty coming to light in forms no longer traceable to a
conventional idea of order, but synonymous with biological diversity.
(Read the page below: Drifts / Fillers (Matrix) / Natural Dispersion / Intermingling with accents/ Successional Planting / Self seeding and watch the video of Piet Oudolf's "Potters Fields Park" in London)
This
involves the creation of a green culture open to solutions for
the
slow, progressive decline of climatic and ecological variety,
addressing the trend of rising temperatures and the scarcity of
water. Attention to the sustainability of plant choices, along with
informed
planning regarding naturally occurring biological systems, in the
creation of ecologically based, designed urban long term, somewhat
self-sufficient
plant communities. Hardy and enduring
plants set
into
the heart of a
project
which, mimicking natural landscapes, can conduct the dynamism of
biological communities into
the urban landscapes of our cities. The management of these spaces
will yield, in autumn and winter, food
for birds
and insects which
eat the
heads of dead flowers, as well as the formal beauty of perennial
grasses in their winter phase,
intervening only in their pruning, resulting in reduced expenditures.
And so even the grassland communities may be open to maintenance as
no-mow zones, where public use permits it, leaving them to their
natural development. In this case, too, expenditures are reduced by
entrusting
end-of-season mowing to farmers to use for grazing
their animals.
Sustainability in the choice of the
species,
sustainability
in planning, and sustainability of management. Thus “sustainability”
becomes synonymous with “diversity”,
that same diversity
which makes up the Landscape of Peace in the Allegory
of Good Government fresco,
but for a totally new landscape.
The
risk of not heeding ecological urgency, not translating it into the
forms most consonant with
it,
is that the landscape in which we live might
cease to
represent anything for anyone, and instead
presents
repeating forms that nevertheless do not contribute to a sense of
belonging.
And
it is belonging which creates a City. If Good Government and its
Peace had found, in the fourteenth century, the appropriate pictorial
representation in
that
perfect Landscape, we must ask ourselves how the twenty-first
century's ecological urgency, our
Peace,
can be adequately represented.
What will our allegory be?
Ferrara
does not have great economic resources, but it is equipped with a
tool for the management of public green spaces which allows
innovation. It is called Adozione
Verde;
in English, Green Adoption: a non-profit association of private
citizens who adopt from the City Council, for five years, an area
from 20 square meters to 2000. Differentiated use of pubblic space is
thus spread
throughout the entire city, enriched by the most varied contributions
from private citizens. At this point we arrive to the importance of
awareness and the culture of citizenship in protecting the quality of
the adoptions
and this
workshop addresses
the culture of citizenship since it can establish agreement for
the building
of broad public consent in different countries.
And
so
hybrid
loses
every connotation of size and becomes a habit of thought, and thus it
can push beyond the idea of the Park to enter our homes, enriching
our fragmented private green spaces in order to transform them and
include them in a greater unity.
If
we imagine seeing the city of Ferrara from the air, blessed with the
sight of its birds, the fragmented totality of its gardens reveals
itself. Birds do not notice dividing walls between gardens, they fly
above a single
garden as
large as the entire city, whose
richness
comes from the variety of the many smaller habitats which comprise
it. It is not a question of scale so much as one of approach, and it
has a name: once again, it is “diversity”. If this vision
matures, Ferrara, like many other cities, may not need a Hybrid Park,
because it is already
a
Hybrid Park, in that it already functions
as
such. It is only necessary for it to mature, that is, diversify,
in the functioning of its green spaces as a whole, while
each piece is valued for its unique particulars.
In
Ferrara, multiplicity maintains the unity between the present and the
medieval within an unexpected chronological jump. Perhaps we must
think to a
spatial multiplicity capable of perpetuating the little garden and
the great park, making them work together,
rendering intervention at every scale more fluid, more adaptable; or
rather, making our Allegoria
more attentive to the fragile unpredictability of our times.
Hybrid Parks Some more things
Hybrid Parks Some more things
La piccola Incanto
una storia per una bambina di nome Emma
La cosa che piu' di tutte le piaceva era chiedere: “Perche'?”
C'erano tante cose nuove nella vita di Incanto... ah gia', la nostra piccola amica si chiama cosi'... lo so, e' un nome da bambino, ma lei era stata chiamata cosi', chissa' perche'.
Dunque, c'erano tante cose nuove nella vita di Incanto e davanti ad esse la cosa che piu' di tutte le piaceva era chiedere: “Perche'?”. Questo accadeva di continuo, era piu' forte di lei.
Quando si sedeva a tavola: “Perche'?”
Quando giocava: “Perche'?”
Qando faceva il bagno: “Perche'?”
... poi finalmente andava a letto e allora, proprio mentre chiudeva gli occhi: “Perche'?”
E questo capitava non solo a casa, ma anche nel parco davanti alla lucertola e in cortile davanti al gatto del vicino.
Un giorno che era nel parco Incanto stava saltellando in una pozzanghera con gli stivali nuovi quando ad un tratto si fermo' e disse: “Perche'?”.
L'acqua che si raccoglieva al centro della pozzanghera approfittando di un po' di quiete, rispose: “Perche' cosa?”
Ma Incanto era saltata sul prato e gia' stava correndo verso il grande albero. Questo albero era un albero di noci pieno di palline verdi alcune delle quali, piu' mature delle altre, erano cadute a terra e formavano un bel tappeto. Incanto arrivo' ai piedi del grande albero, si fermo' sul tappeto e guardando in alto disse: “Perche'?”.
Noce – questo era il nome del grande albero – allora disse: “Perche' cosa?” e stiro' i suoi rami piu' sottili nell'aria attendendo una risposta.
La bimba pero' non lo stava ascoltando, con una noce in una mano e una noce nell'altra, giocava.
Sembrava che ad Incanto non importasse nulla di una risposta ai suoi “Perche'?” e in effetti le sue non erano delle vere e proprie domande del tipo:
“Perche' c'e' l'acqua per terra?” oppure
“Perche' ci sono tante palline sotto il grande albero?”
Semplicemente lei diceva: “Perche'?”. Era fatta cosi'.
Alcuni giorni dopo venne una giornata di sole, di quelle in cui i bambini vogliono solo correre e giocare e Incanto volle andare a saltare nella pozzanghera e giocare con le palline ai piedi del grande albero. Aveva messo gli stivali nuovi anche se c'era il sole.
“Perche'?” subito, prima ancora di saltare nella pozzanghera, “Perche'?” di nuovo e comincio' a saltare, ma qualcosa era cambiato, l'acqua non c'era piu', al suo posto c'era una pappa di fango. Come gia' aveva fatto l'acqua anche il fango le chiese: “Perche' cosa?”
Ma Incanto stava gia' correndo verso il grande albero.
Quando arrivo' ai piedi di Noce si accorse che anche qui qualcosa era cambiato, l'erba era diventata molto alta e le noci erano quasi tutte scomparse: “Perche'?”
Incanto prese una prima noce che trovo' in una mano e una seconda nell'altra e questa volta si sdraio' sull'erba. L'erba era cosi' soffice che Incanto socchiuse gli occhi.
Il sole era alto sopra di lei. Si muoveva tra le foglie e diventava bianco, giallo e verde e dentro quei colori Incanto si addormento'. E comincio' a sognare. Sognava di essere sdraiata sui rami piu' alti e piu' sottili del grande albero, quelli che piu' sentono l'aria e si muoveva insieme a Noce che cosi' comincio' a parlare:
“Incanto – che bel nome per una bambina – posso farti una domanda? Come mai chiedi “Perche'?” senza aggiungere che cosa vuoi sapere?”.
Il sole bianco, giallo e verde abbagliava Incanto che si sveglio' proprio mentre stava per rispondere a Noce.
“Che bel sogno” penso' e le venne voglia di fare una cosa... anzi le venne voglia di fare tante cose.
Corse dal fango: “Perche' non c'e' piu' l'acqua?” gli chiese,
poi corse dalla lucertola: “Perche' non hai la coda come le tue amiche?”
e dal gatto del vicino: “Perche' fai Miao?”
e alla fine, alla fine di questo lungo giro torno' da Noce e guardando in alto chiese: “... Uff... Noce, perche' non ci sono piu' tante palline?”
e: “... Uff... Uff... Noce, perche' il sole diventa bianco, giallo e verde dentro di te?”
e: “... Uff... Uff... Uff... Noce, perche' non hai aspettato la mia risposta?” –
– insomma tutti i “Perche'?” che le venivano in mente sempre piu' numerosi proprio perche' c'era sempre qualcosa di nuovo da aggiungere.
Alla sera di quel lungo giorno Incanto era davvero stanca e dopo il bagno gli occhi le si chiusero che lei stava gia' sognando e sognava le risposte dei suoi amici l'indomani.
English version
(translated by the sweetest Amelia Linsky)
Little Incanto
a tale for a child called Emma
The thing she liked best was to ask “Why?”
There were many new things in Incanto's life... and yes, that was indeed the name of our little friend. I know it's a boy's name, but that's what she was called, and who knows why.
Anyway, there were many new things in Incanto's life, and upon meeting them what she liked to do best was ask “Why?” This happened all the time; she couldn't help it.
When she sat down at the table: “Why?”
When she played: “Why?”
When she took a bath: “Why?”
...and when finally she went to bed, even as she was closing her eyes: “Why?”
And it happened not only at home, but also in the park with the lizard and in the courtyard with the neighbor's cat.
One day, in the park, Incanto was jumping in a puddle with her new boots when suddenly she stopped and said “Why?”
The water pooling in the puddle, taking advantage of the moment of quiet, responded, “Why what?”
But Incanto had already jumped out and was running towards the great tree. This tree was a walnut tree, full of little green balls, some of which, the more mature ones, had fallen to the earth and made a beautiful carpet. Incanto arrived at the foot of the great tree, paused on the carpet, and looking up she said, “Why?”
Walnut – this was the name of the great tree – said then: “Why what?” and stretched its slenderest shoots up into the air, waiting for a response.
But the girl was not listening. She was playing with a nut in one hand, and another nut in the other.
It seemed that it didn't matter whether anyone responded to Incanto's “Why?” And in fact, hers were not real questions, like:
“Why is there water on the ground?” or
“Why are there so many little green balls under the great tree?”
She simply said “Why?” That was who she was.
Some time later there arrived a beautiful sunny day, the kind in which children only want to run and play. Incanto went to jump in the puddle and to play with the little green balls at the foot of the great tree. She had put on her new boots despite the sun.
An immediate “Why?” even before jumping in the puddle, and another “Why?” and she began to jump, but something had changed. There was no more water. In its place was a mush of mud. As the water had done, the mud asked her: “Why what?”
But Incanto was already running towards the great tree.
When she arrived at Walnut's feet, she realized that something had changed there as well. The grass had grown very tall, and the walnuts had almost all disappeared: “Why?”
Incanto took the first nut she found in one hand, and the second in the other, and this time she lay down on the grass. It was so soft that her eyes began to droop shut.
The sun was high above her. It moved between the leaves and turned white, yellow, and green, and among those colors Incanto fell asleep. And she began to dream. She dreamed that she was lying on the highest and slenderest branches of the great tree, those which feel the air the best, and that she was swaying along with Walnut, who began to speak:
“Incanto – what a nice name for a little girl – may I ask you a question? Why is it that you ask 'why?' without saying what it is you'd like to know?”
The white, yellow, and green sun flashed, and awakened Incanto just as she was about to respond to Walnut.
“What a nice dream,” she thought, and felt a new desire to do something... actually, to do many things.
So she ran to the mud: “Why isn't there any more water?” she asked it,
and then she ran to the lizard: “Why don't you have a tail, like your friends?”
and to the neighbor's cat: “Why do you say 'meow'?”
and in the end, after she had finished this long circuit, she returned to Walnut, and looking up she panted: “...Uff... Walnut, why are there no more little green balls?”
and “...Uff... Uff... Walnut, why does the sun turn white and yellow and green in your leaves?”
and “...Uff... Uff... Uff... Walnut, why didn't you wait for me to answer?” –
– in short, all of the “Whys?” that occurred to her, more and more of them, because there was always something new to ask.
It was a long day, and in the evening Incanto was very tired. After her bath, as soon as her eyes had closed, she was already dreaming; and she dreamed of her friends' answers, which she would hear on the morrow.
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