(Premio Internazionale Carlo Scarpa per il Giardino, 1990-1999)
Luoghi. Forma e vita di giardini e di paesaggi
(Premio Internazionale Carlo Scarpa per il Giardino, 1990-1999) [Places. Form and being of gardens and landscapes (International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens, 1990-1999)] edited by Domenico Luciani Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche-Canova Treviso 2001
351 pages 219 illustrations in colour and 119 black and white euros 43.90
ISBN 88-8409-013-X (series Memorie, 6)
A place occupies a space, it has a site and posture; but it is much more than the space it occupies and the site in which it exists. Place is form and life; it defines the relationship between form and life; it is the constantly updated and constantly changing result of all the layerings of nature and culture (memory) and, at the same time, of all the pressures to continue to change in time, of all the dynamic projections towards the future. Ultimately, and inasmuch as it has to do directly with our sphere of work, the question of the individuality of place, of its temporality, of its spatial commensurability is a question of the extent to which it can be understood and recorded by means of transmittable knowledge and a question too of exercising responsibility for the historical and natural heritage it contains by using political power and recognizable moral and cultural authority to ensure that decisions are taken about actions, changes, provisions, uses and re-uses compatible with the shape and life of the place in the long term. This process of understanding and responsibility perhaps provides a context for the passage from the idea of protection as restriction to the idea that the safeguarding and enhancement of “identity” should provide active guidelines for change.
This is perhaps the most difficult step that the concept of landscape has been taking in recent years, a step based on an acceptance of the fact that the shape and life of places inevitably undergo change. It therefore becomes a duty to direct them towards new forms and new future lives whilst conserving their basic character and the distinctive features of their physiognomy. Every place needs help in governing permanent and unstoppable change. That help becomes indispensable in places where nature is a pregnant presence. This need for management still seems at once obvious and undefined: everybody agrees that it is of paramount importance, but exactly what is involved and who should be responsible remain unanswered questions.
Hence the prize. A prize for a place. It is as if we had been asked: “give an example or two to explain what you mean; show us a couple of places where this blessed “stewardship” can be seen in practice”. So we set ourselves the task of choosing a place each year and of explaining our reasons for the choice. We always take great care to make it clear that our focus is never the creator of a place or its creation but rather the wisdom and skill and continuity that enables that creation to live over time, to be rediscovered and renewed while remaining itself, to achieve a balance between innovation and conservation. A balance that itself is a continuous struggle in time between forces pushing towards ruin and fall and other forces that demand edification and elevation. The evolutionary elements of nature and their artificial counterparts of culture tend at one and the same time to lose shape and to refind it, for life forces to decay and be renewed.
Hanbury Prize for Botanical Gardens Luoghi won the ninth Hanbury Prize for Botanical Gardens in 2001. The Associazione Premio Grinzane Cavour, which awards this annual prize, exists “to foster the culture of gardens, flowers and landscapes and to draw attention to books on architecture or botanical science, albums of photographs or works of creative imagination dedicated to the spirit of nature and the literature of gardens in both a literal sense and as a metaphor of life”.
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