Val Bavona

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The International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens
seventeenth edition, 2006

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chiudi didascalia

Report of the Jury
The jury of the International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens has decided to award the 2006 Prize to Val Bavona, a short, rugged valley high in the mountains of Canton Ticino, Switzerland, an "awesomely beautiful" place, gouged by the glacier, shaped by water and stone, in which a community (about a thousand people) has come to terms with the power and harshness of nature and over time has developed the ideas, the attitudes, the actions and the artefacts of human life when pushed to its limits. The shape and life of the valley comprise a single geographical and historical entity, the component parts of which are visible with extraordinary clarity.
The glacier: one senses its presence from the U-shaped cross-section of the valley; and in fact it is still there up on Mount Basòdino (3,272 metres) and on the other mountains which have resisted climate change and the ravages of time.
Water: these glaciers give rise to the narrow, 124-square-kilometre basin of the valley, 80% of which is over 1,400 metres above sea level, and to the steep course of the river, which plunges 900 metres in the space of ten kilometres before joining the River Maggia, which itself flows into Lake Maggiore at 197 metres asl, some twenty kilometres further on. The river bed is now dry but the noise and force of the water, whose tumultuous white spray once gave the river its name (Bavone), are still felt through the Foroglio Falls, the only survivor of the great hydroelectric projects of the mid-XX century. Along the former course of the river the signs, symbols and tools of a sober and dignified material culture, at once "rough and refined", remain a constant presence. We can imagine the violence of the river in flood and the accompanying sense of danger conveyed by the accounts of many direct witnesses. We can understand how the memory of the river can be so abiding, how its absence continues to be unbearable and how the sudden silence that followed the diversion of its waters must still constitute an aching void in the soul of the community. And climbing to Robiei, where the pastures of the alpe have been flooded to make way for a hydroelectric reservoir, we can experience, through the turbines and tunnels within the mountain, one of the contemporary world's new forms of water.

Given its north-west/south-east axis, the two sides of the valley, the monti, have very different amounts of sun, wind and landslides but they are equally precipitous and almost unnegotiable. Yet all life in the valley is based on the "vertical" seasonal transhumance of the livestock along vertiginous paths and passages; before winter sets in they are brought down to the valley bottom and in spring they are taken back up to "charge" the mountain pastures at altitudes of between 1,300 and 2,300 metres; in the late 1800s there were 20 of these pastures or alpi (with 449 cows and 2,740 goats), and now there is just one, which survives because it is served by a cablecar. Spread out along the base of the valley, which is a few hundred metres wide and in the space of about ten kilometres rises from 500 to 1,000 metres above sea level, are the twelve settlements called terre, inhabited by the terrieri throughout the year until the xvi century and then only in the warmer season, little clusters of houses with their devotional buildings perched on sites where the sun could be glimpsed, surrounded by clearings, beyond which rise the sides of the valley, like two vertical forests of rock, with trees and little strips of earth ranged on exposed ledges, corone, whose grass also had to be harvested despite the danger and the frequent accidents. The terre, just far enough from each other to merit separate names – Mondada, Fontana, Alnedo, Sabbione, Ritorto, Foroglio, Roseto, Fontanellata, Faedo, Bolla, Sonlerto, San Carlo –, a distinctive appearance and the indispensable minimum of common pasture land, were connected until the mid-XX century by a track (for the cows) and a system of minor pathways equipped with planks and other light, deliberately makeshift devices, designed to be swept away by floodwaters or landslides and reconstructed straight afterwards.
The unassuming terre and the replaceable links between them; the alpi and the strict rules governing the use of the land and the corti (huts) from the May-hay meadows to the high pastures; the treacherous yet indispensable paths between them: a set of values and facts that defines the historical, geographical and anthropological identity of the place and forcefully confronts the present generations, particularly in the light of the crises facing the modern world, with the issues of safeguarding and development and the thorny relationship between conservation and innovation in the context of the natural and historical heritage.

As well as the astonishing natural, historical and ethno-anthropological significance of the area, the reasons that make Val Bavona worthy of special attention and that most profoundly influenced the decision of the jury lie in the all-important presence of a community with a rare degree of awareness of the uniqueness of its position and a perception of that difference not as a shameful legacy of ancient misery but rather as something of real value, a privilege, to be appreciated and passed on to future generations. Hence the authoritative position of the bodies responsible, the municipal administrations and the patriziati of Cavergno and Bignasco, the Fondazione Valle Bavona, the Canton and the Confederation. Hence their joint efforts to devise planning regulations, legal frameworks for land use and environmental issues, best practice manuals for restoration work on buildings, works of art and traditional tools and other items. Hence the search for ideas and projects designed to foster new economic and anthropological models for a mountain environment that do not depend on the monoculture of tourism. And hence the upkeep of mountain pastures, enlightened forestry, new skills, new trades and scrupulous maintenance, all driven and guided by the vigilance of a shared approach.
In Val Bavona, therefore, the community and its representatives have accepted pro tempore responsibility for an inherited material culture, knowing that its value lies not in monuments or the commissions of wealthy patrons but in the ingenuity and hard work of past generations, in their absolute determination not to abandon their mountain home and thus to give sense to life and death, and in the extreme intensity of their relationship with a nature which is at once awful and awe-inspiring. The community of Val Bavona continues to celebrate the beauty of a lifestyle reduced to essentials (houses still do without electricity) as a real utopia, a simple, practical way of continuing, conserving and innovating the resolute search for living space that has characterized its history, finding a use even for the great rocks dislodged in landslides by using the earth they brought down with them to create fragments of vegetable garden and pasture or by the exploitation of jagged ravines to make grondàn, cantìn and splüi.
In short, Val Bavona provides us with an example of steadfast stewardship of the values it represents, a commitment rooted in the profound links that unite the community, in a critical awareness of its shared history and in a long and lively tradition of intelligence and talent epitomized by the figures of Federico Balli (1854-1889), an entrepreneur and essayist, and Plinio Martini (1923-1979), a primary school teacher and poet, an excellent writer and defender of civil values. The tradition lives on and remains a visible force. The jury has therefore decided to award the Carlo Scarpa seal for 2006 to the heirs of this tradition, in recognition of what they have done and are doing and as a warm encouragement to continue: to make Val Bavona living proof of how the enduring history of a place, when it is truly understood and loved by those who live there are accountable for it, can provide the least uncertain guidance in the whirlwind of overwhelming change that has swept through our times; and to help us to envisage how another world may actually be possible.