04. Signes de vie
The link that exists between the soul and the body reflects the intimate sense of cosmic life, the reassuring essence of the humanised universe. The body is often considered to be like a rigid envelope designed to protect the soul, or a sensory consciousness which constitutes the sap of life.
In the human body, the mixture of these two components is continuous, in space and through time. Feelings come into our mind and our consciousness through physical and chemical stimulations.
Plants are themselves rich in dual values too. Sap circulates through the mechanisms of phytoregulation that determines and administers the opening of buds and flowers, as well as establishing the end of lifecycles.
The path that is offered to visitors encapsulates life’s own path, whose stages are passed through thanks to kinds of synapses, links obtained amongst the enchanted forests of the rows of bamboos.
The colours, light, sounds, tactility, all these elements rise up from the garden, which needs nothing else to live other than solar energy and nutrients from the air (rain and carbon dioxide) and from the soil (nutritional elements and water solution) into a later intersection of space and substances.
The installation highlights tactility by tempting the public to caress the bamboos. Taste and small are also appealed to: the first by the choice of vegetables and the second by highly scented flower beds.
DESIGNERS
Flavio Pollano was born in Pinerolo (Turin, Italy) on 11 August 1969 and he lives and works in San Secondo. After passing his Baccalaureate in sciences (1988), he got his Masters in Agricultural Sciences in Turin (1994), with his thesis being on the physiology of the vine. Later, following his passion for ornamental greenery, botany, landscape and composition, he attended the advanced course in Parks, Gardens and Green Spaces (1997), once again in the main city of the Piedmont region, and he continued his development with the Specialist Diploma in Parks and Gardens (2000) at the same University, with a thesis on the restoration of a large historic park. Since the start of his professional career, he has been designing and drawing a number of gardens and parks and has also been dealing with reforestation and the environment, as well as with landscape and the design of rural buildings; he works with the Arboriculture and Agronomy Departments of the University of Turin and has been writing for a long time in Italian reviews, both specialist and non-specialist, on the subject of villas and châteaux, parks and gardens, agriculture and the environment. He has been involved in many exhibitions with thematic garden installations, and has achieved excellent results in several competitions for ideas in the fields of garden architecture and urban decoration. He also does some teaching and popularising on various levels (gardening as a hobby – gardening clubs, retraining of park and garden technicians, university lectures) on the subject of gardening, garden projects and composition, historic gardens, outside development, fruit-tree arboriculture and phytopathology. There are often trainees in his office from agricultural and environmental schools, as well as from the garden and landscape design course in the Agronomy Faculty of Turin. He is a member of committees for planning and safeguarding the landscape of several communes in his region, and is a partner in the field of landscape for major firms of architects, both Italian and international. He was accepted in 2001 as an ordinary associate of the Italian Association of Landscape Architecture (A.IA.P.P.-E.F.L.A.), and in 2006 he got his second diploma, in Landscape Architecture, at the Turin Polytechnic, with his thesis involving a meticulous analysis of the transformations over the centuries of the large grounds of the Agnelli family’s villa at Villar Perosa (a province of Turin). Since 2008, he has been the project manager for Patrick Blanc, for creating and maintaining various Plant Walls in Italy. He is a consultant for his city’s civil court in the field of agriculture, gardens and environment and he has also worked on the renaturalisation of river banks and quarries and the design of several roundabouts, alleys and squares, often within the framework of the highway development that preceded and has followed the “Turin 2006” Winter Olympics. Since 2006, through a commission from the Cosso Foundation, he has been involved in the major restoration project for the large grounds and minor buildings of the ancient Miradolo Château (San Secondo di Pinerolo).
Maurice Kanah did his advanced studies in Brera, where he got his diploma and then he attended the Fine Arts Academy in 1968; he registered at the Architecture Faculty of the Polytechnic School in Milan, and in 1974 he graduated with honours with a thesis on urban planning, entitled “Redevelopment of districts with particular emphasis on the southern part of Milan (Rogoredo)”, with his supervisor being Professor Giuseppe Campos Venuti. In 1972, he was involved in a research group, financed by the Lombardy Region, on the “model hospital”, for the new hospital which was to be constructed in the Ronchetto delle Rane area in the south of Milan. In 1973 and 1974 he was involved in editing the review “Town Planning in Milan”. He had experience of teaching as an assistant lecturer in architectural composition in the Faculty of Architecture at the Milan Polytechnic until 1979. At the same time, he began working professionally in Milan, where he was then living. During his long career, he has dealt with urban planning, architecture and interior design and still does so, he has special expertise in the fields of restoration and reuse of industrial buildings, communities for recovery and services, hospital construction, technological restructuring, and factory equipment, accommodation for large offices and production complexes and state infrastructure design. He was already a member of the Public Works Administration Technical Committee of the administrator for the Latium region in the capacity of an expert, and has been a member in the same capacity of the 1st section of the Higher Council for Public Works since 1996. He has been involved in numerous architectural competitions both inside and outside Italy and, on several occasions, he has won first prize. He has published a certain amount of work in the fields of restoration, construction and the enhancement of the environment. He has developed the theoretical and operational aspects of architecture and innovation, along with project management, and continues to do so, in accordance with the technological quality of the components and the innovative materials. He is a former advisor for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, since 2001, he has been head of prevention and protection at the Palazzo della Farnesina. In 1998, he received the certification for D. Lgs. 494/96 [Italian Safety Law] as safety coordinator for planning and carrying out work. He has the competence required to fulfil the function of head of prevention and protection by dint of decree no. 626/94. Since March 2006, he has been a member of the Inter-Ministerial Committee for “social policies and urban and housing redevelopment” of the Infrastructure and Transport Ministry.
