client: COS status: conceptual proposal year: 2019
‘Linear Gardens’ is an installation dedicated to the discovery of new relations between architecture and horticulture in the urban realm. The installation begins with the idea of gardens as places of abstraction, as well as earthly places, full of smells, matter, life, places to be touched, cultivated, and discovered. Reinterpreting the diverse elements which compose all soils - the minerals and the organic components - the installation proposes an array of new composite materials. These materials, with their variety of fragrances, textures, and forms, play with the concepts of habitat and hab- itation, reinterpreting, abstracting, and re-imagining what can constitute a garden, and what can constitute a city. The materials proposed - gardens in their own rights, capable of support- ing plant and animal life - are developed across a range of durability, from the most brittle to the most malleable, from the most porous to the almost impermeable. Cast as sculptural wall elements, they engage with the spaces of palazzo Isimbardi and the architecture of Milan’s Renaissance period, defining new porous, living, ever changing spaces. From a distance, the installation constructs a scenography, guiding visitors and guests across the shaded courtyard, towards the sunlit back garden. From up-close, it encourages exploration and engagement, asking human and non human guests to temporarily rest, feed, farm, play, transform, smell, and explore. In other words, to become gardeners, explorers, collectors and cartographers of the new and ancient natures of the city.
