Educational project for the protection of local ecosystems through Land Art installations
The encounter between Art and Nature produces a fairy-tale dimension, Land Art installations to discover and protect biodiversity. Natural materials, together with the reuse of waste materials, are transformed into zoomorphic sculptures, with functional lodgings and shelters inside them, for specimens of local fauna and flora. A creative process carried out through a direct dialogue with nature, involving the local community through practical and educational workshops to help local ecosystems.
Cross-border/international
Italy
Poland
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Friuli Venezia Giulia
Emilia-Romagna
Lombardia
Warsaw
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
A series of artistic installations in symbiosis and in support of urban and rural ecosystems, actions designed to involve and raise awareness among citizens.
Zoomorphic sculptures are created through a direct dialogue with the place of intervention, assembling natural materials found exclusively on site, without damage or impact on the environment, in line with the poetics of Land Art.
Each sculpture will host solid geometric structures similar to houses (inspired by "Bug Hotels" and "Bird Houses") designed in advance in a modular way, made with mainly recycled wood materials that will be equipped and provided with floors and areas suitable for the settlement of a wide range of animals and plants.
Around the houses, shapes and anatomies of the representative animal specimens of the place will be developed, through an intertwining/joining of branches found on site.
Real abodes to take refuge and multiply, especially for the winter period. For the construction of the sectors, a vast range of materials will be used, natural or artificial, depending on what the place of intervention offers.
Based on concepts of eco-compatibility, circular economy and the use of local resources, the installations will create small ecosystem centers that will provide shelter for plants, insects, birds, small mammals, amphibians and reptiles.
In parallel with the production of the installations, collaborating with local institutions, the project will develop educational workshops open to citizens, on environmental education and enhancement of the territory; with which to involve the community, teaching how to produce housing in a practical way through the use of easily available and/or reused materials.
By creating a situation of interaction and direct participation of citizens, who will be driven to the creative DIY and self-production of as many structures as possible that will be disseminated throughout the territory.
Biodiversity
Art
Education
Reuse
Community
The series of site specific interventions is designed with the aim of creating services in support of biodiversity, regenerating and strengthening local ecosystems. Through a participatory process that is based on a practice of reuse and creative recycling in symbiosis with the territory and the landscape, in total respect for the natural environment, in line with the poetics of Land Art
The sculptures will be made from plant materials found on site such as branches, trunks and dry shrubs, which will be collected and assembled to bring them to life a second time.
All the wooden material will be collected locally in the wooded areas and/or through collaboration with arborists and local operators who deal with the maintenance of green areas; organizing access to waste material from their ordinary maintenance and possibly agreeing on targeted cleaning pruning.
The accommodation inside the sculptures will mainly made by reusing and recycling waste materials from local businesses, such as pallets, beams, pallet trucks, boxes. The compartments of the "Bug Hotels" will be filled with natural and artificial materials collected following a cleaning of the intervention site.
They will constitute a refuge for guests who will populate it to shelter during the cold season and/or to house their progeny. Each refuge, depending on the type of accommodation provided, will be able to offer shelter to a different selection of insects, birds, small mammals, reptiles and amphibians.
In parallel to the animal housing, plants will be inserted, mainly climbers, which will contribute to the important role in reducing air and soil pollution; as well as growing in symbiosis with the sculptures, covering them, providing a weave that consolidates and strengthens the structures.
Furthermore, during its organic life cycle, it is possible that fungi, mosses and lichens will establish themselves autonomously in the structures, creating a small but complete ecosystem.
The goal of the project is to combine art and nature,through the creation of structures that harmonize functionality and aesthetics, involving local communities in a simple and direct way with particular attention to the younger age group.
The project, through a creative and didactic approach, wants to exemplify new ways of relating to nature, through an artistic process participated by citizens, creating opportunities for information and awareness in parallel with practical and manual activities of creative production.
The interventions look at the sustainability and circularity of materials; and therefore to the regeneration of natural environments of common interest.
Naturalness, organicity and materiality are the fundamental reference of the aesthetics of the sculptures made of natural and/or reused materials.
Through the participatory realization of the sculptures, would develop an important opportunity to get back in touch with nature, understanding its value and reconsidering the relationship with it, instilling values regarding respect, protection and enhancement of the natural heritage.
The sculptures, developed through a simple technical process, arrive at an elaborate and surprising aesthetic result, with a strong aesthetic and emotional impact.
A sort of fantastic and fairy-tale dimension in which the vegetable element lives again in animal form, making the inanimate animate.
Around this dimension of wonder and fascination, the interventions aim to capture the attention of the community on current ecological issues.
Through a didactic and playful involvement, made of workshops, simple and accessible to all, the experience aims to create the basis for a common awareness, which will lead the community to engage itself over time, through the self-managed creation and maintenance of the structures.
The project wants to develop concepts of broad social inclusion, through actions open to the public, involving the community as much as possible in a simple and direct way.
A creative and educational process for everyone, conceived with a view to local interventions through the development of a multi-level community network.
The interventions aim to conserve and restore the environment, generating a common responsibility for all members of the community.
Transforming and living green areas together as social spaces, places of connection and sharing to be protected and cared together, where everyone, in their own small way, will be able to contribute.
Social engagement would be stimulated through a campaign of artistic/educational workshops on local ecosystem dynamics, alongside practical workshops on how to build housing and shelters independently.
Users will be encouraged to have fun developing their creativity, through the reuse of available materials.
The developed housing would constitute a new set of social practices, accessible and easy to develop in any context (urban and rural), helping to create new ecological and collaborative actions led by citizens.
The various interventions would be realized thanks also to Citizen-Science projects by developing a network for sharing information on how to intervene in current and future housing design.
A creative process developed together with local communities, thanks also to the support of organizations and institutions that would have the fundamental role of strengthening interventions in terms of quality of experience for the community, helping to develop each installation around local needs, taking into account the characteristic social and cultural elements of the place.
Economically these interventions are easily accessible to any reality, having minimal costs as regards the materials, based on the principles of circular economy, use of the resources present, reuse, km 0 and zero waste.
The aim of the project is to raise awareness in the community, simplify and make knowledge of the environment and the interaction between man and nature interactive.
Citizens are the main actors of the project. The will is to involve them as much as possible, the project being designed with the aim of improving the quality of the natural areas they have and at the same time empower and bring people together. Making them actively participate in studies, data collection and planning of new actions, that would enable the consolidation of the green areas of one's neighborhood and the protection of the fauna present.
Through active participation, the project wants to strengthen the sense of community and belonging to the green areas and the nature that surrounds us.
The public, through the discovery of local natural wonders, would generate a sense of connection with these spaces.
Citizens will be fundamental in the implementation of these interventions: they will help regenerate these areas through citizen science activities and projects, implemented and expanded also through associations that work for the development of environmental awareness in the area.
In collaboration with private and public istitutions, scientific community and other professionals they will be able to observe and monitor the biodiversity of the areas concerned, favoring the strengthening of ecosystem dynamics.
The social impact on the community is considerable, thanks to the participation of citizens, the project would contribute to a change of perspective through educational initiatives, civic participation, promotion and dissemination in order to make urban spaces greener, promoting reconnection with nature and strengthening awareness and connection with the environment.
The resulting network would also lead to the development of educational information materials for a very diverse audience to raise awareness of local biodiversity values.
NaturAnimals Housing is an opportunity to support local stakeholders to develop actions related to daily resilience, generate practices to reduce consumption with the principle of reduce/reuse/recycle, through a multidisciplinary dialogue between professionals, institutions, social entities and citizens.
The project starts from a local point of view. Involving associations and entities that are already active in the area in the creation and development of local activities, artistic events, festivals that deal with social and cultural issues in relation to nature.
Relying on collaboration and involvement at different levels, the project aims to an active involvement of civil society. Target especially to public (and private) institutions, municipalities, schools, organizations, teams of experts from different sectors and the inhabitants of the intervention sites.
Interventions would be co-organized for example with municipalities, schools, nature reserves (naturalists, botanists, biologists…) and artistic associations; developing programming in a broader way, through an interconnection of knowledge and local skills to support, highlight and bring to light the typical characteristics of the place of intervention.
The idea is then to develop a network of collaborations and connections that allow for greater involvement of other entities and resources; demonstrating how events, activities, processes and products are able to convey the feeling of belonging to nature and encourage a change of perspective towards the natural environment.
Transdisciplinary programming would encourage stakeholders to create innovative events for the community, which could potentially include larger institutional realities (by accessing tenders, regional, national and European funding on environment, culture and sustainability).
The artistic projects that I have undertaken arise from a series of reflections on the Anthropocene era and on the continuous biological transformations that it has brought about at a local and global level; how the change in climatic and territorial conditions has directly influenced biodiversity itself.
By connecting to the debate on eco-sustainability and the activities of anthropization and urban transformation, the project covers a wide range of areas of interest and skills, for this reason it provides for a multidisciplinary dialogue between professionals, institutions, social organizations and citizens.
With the common goal of protecting the environment, a participatory synergy would be created between art, science, technology and education.
Art wants to be the main fulcrum of the skills that I personally would bring into play, around which in a didactic way, build an interconnection with specialists in the various sectors.
Collaboration with scholars and researchers in the natural sciences sector is fundamental. Through a dialogue with them, the research and development area could be better developed; the choice of the most interesting specimens to create, deepening the different specificities concerning the fauna, flora and landscape.
Through a collaboration with cultural and educational organizations, the project would consolidate taking into account the interactions between work, territory and culture.
The interventions would create the basis for the creation of new territorial projects, or would be linked to projects already undertaken by local associations, in the field of education and protection of the present natural heritage.
The installations would favor the creation or redevelopment of green spaces, the restoration of historic green spaces, the reorganization of school green spaces with educational purposes, the definition of green paths, as well as the setting up of visitor centers, exhibition routes, itineraries and nature trails.
The innovative nature of the project lies in the use of art as a vehicle to create ecosystem services, as well as a network of social relationships that look towards inclusion, participation and sustainability.
Using art as a tool to create aesthetically beautiful and functional objects, to amaze and capture the attention of the community on current issues regarding ecology, the relationship between humans and nature, and the small and large ecosystem dynamics that regulate natural places.
Each sculpture is a unique aesthetic product, the result of an interaction, a dialogue with the place of intervention; it is the result of a creative process that takes shape directly on site, developing following the shapes of the material found; it is the result of the specific interaction with each single place of intervention and its community.
The sculptures created would constitute artistic installations which are at the same time effective and functional complete ecosystem centers. The structures would create small independent biosystems, hosting within them spots for the proliferation of plants, animals and fungi; through a development with zero neagtive impact and minimal costs.
The subjects represented, being immediately recognizable (mainly animals), allow any interlocutor to relate to the artistic field in a direct, simple and inclusive way.
At the same time, the small architectures inside the sculptures have a simple modular structure that anyone can create; stimulating the community to get involved by recreating, reinventing and reproducing the structures. Implementing a large-scale production of as many structures as possible, to be distributed and installed on the territory (urban and rural).
Thus generating an urban revitalization option based on self-management and self-production. Offering an effective solution to the current biosphere problem, especially within urban fabrics.
The project is based on a dynamic of extended reproducibility. Acting through small local actions, the idea is to re-propose itself in as many contexts as possible; with particular attention to urban green areas, being those most in need, but it is applicable to urban, semi-urban and rural contexts.
The structures of the Bug hotels and Bird houses are a simple design to take inspiration from, miniature architectures capable of offering an enormous ecosystem service. Their modular structure allows for a simple creation and maintenance process; as well as the wide choice of materials (natural and artificial) with which to build and furnish them.
The variety of options for arranging structures is very large. Depending on the type of "accommodation" provided, the Bug Hotels will be able to offer shelter to different types of inhabitants.
For the construction of the sectors, any type of material, natural or artificial, is used, as long as it is hollow or capable of providing "small ravines": bamboo or marsh canes, herbaceous stems, perforated trunks, but also earth / clay / perforated bricks and rolled natural fibers, pine cones, stones, (but also waste objects such as aluminium cans, ceramics, plastic bottles, PVC pipes ..).
These characteristics make the structures reproducible in any context: the technique and materials are accessible to anyone, anywhere.
Based on this potential for reproduction, the project aims precisely to stimulate the largest number of individuals to create structures independently, developing an autonomous network of aware citizens and producers of structures that help biodiversity, scattering the houses everywhere, within the urban and non-urban fabric.
In urban areas we can observe how, following the construction of infrastructures and buildings, there is a significant regression of green areas and natural habitats, causing the loss of complex ecosystems.
They constitute an important resource for the biological system of the planet, and for this reason it is important to favor their survival; the loss of such environments affects more and more evidently the indicators of biodiversity loss, pollution and climate change.
Anthropogenic effects and extreme events related to climate change are putting pressure on natural and cultural heritage with increasing frequency.
The protection of green areas near inhabited centers is a necessary action to have an improvement and a positive impact on the landscape and on the community, based on the protection of nature already present.
The project, in response to these ever-changing global challenges, is implemented locally. Trying to respond to the need for innovative conservation and safeguarding approaches, with the aim of improving the capacity of the public and private sector to mitigate the impact of these changes.
The project addresses the development of a multidisciplinary approach to increase sustainability, exploring practical possibilities of urban resilience.
Thanks also to the planning of public participation programs, adapted to the different social realities, in collaboration with local entities linked to the social fabric of each territory, developing participation and dissemination activities.
By increasing the attention on urban green areas, the project wants to make them multifunctional places dedicated to inclusion, sharing and learning.
Raising citizens' awareness of environmental issues, linking global issues such as climate change through the enhancement of local green areas.
