Still Alive is a temporary intervention, small in scale yet powerful in meaning or at least in an abstract charge. Weaving together two different time periods introduces a spark for thinking about contemporary issues within a preserved historic garden. The installation is grounded in topical discourse by re-using materials and points at some disturbance by offering a highly aesthetical and dense arrangement within the quiet historical setting. It is a witty juxtaposition of preserving heritage and ecology that drives one to reflect on social and environmental changes, the eclectic strangeness of our time, and how landscape architecture practice can answer playfully and provocatively. The relation between the historical and the today ignited a lively discussion among the jury members, offering different perspectives on the work, which proves that landscape architecture can produce highly charged conceptual statements on a small scale.
- from the award statements
Today, we donnot have other option than changing our attitude and habit in building cities. Our inert cities wastes must be considered as resources in contemporary city development.
Still alive proposes to present an aesthetic garden, using only materials from urban demolition. Those inert waste from city constitutes a living rock garden, recolonized, “still alive” that shows strengthness and resiliency of natural dynamics which reclaims its rights over what the human constructs and rejects.
This contemporary waste rockery highlights richness of poor soils through an adapted pionneer plant collection. Still alive, as a new masterpiece of the romantic park, is located in the main historic park perspective of Aglié Castell, in Torino Councill.
The garden is made up of two circles; rockery and meadow.
The rockery is installed on the mineral part, above the Fiumi fountain. Made with inert waste from demolition, this new kind of rocks form large mineral borders circle that contains the planted garden. This waste, arranged and sorted, remind ruins from romantic gardens, like some existing others in the park. This planted garden is mainly composed of pioneer plants from dry environments.
This rockery garden emphasize diversity and vegetation layers which become biotops in a living garden.
The historic park main perspective is regulary mowed. Still Alive proposes to show meadows life in stopping mowing. Thus large left mown circle shows meadow flowering and its essential role in the ecological balance in open space for biodiversity.
The project was part of the exhibition titled “Ripensare il paesaggio. 7 giardini per la biodiveristà” (Re-thinking landscape. 7 gardens for biodiversity) organized and curated by Alessandra Gallo Orsi (Castello Ducale di Aglié, Residenze Reali Sabaude), Marco Ferrari (Politecnico di Torino), and Bianca Maria Rinaldi (Politecnico di Torino). The exhibition consisted of seven garden installations and took place in the historic park of Castello Ducale di Aglié from 29 September to 5 November 2023.
