Euroflora 2025 – Genova
Site: Genova
Year 2024 2025
1st Prize and Design Development
With: URGES s.r.l
Client: Porto Antico Genova
Design Assistants: Sara Novarese, Michele Ripamonti, Sara Santambrogio
Direction
Barbara Rosa e Stefano Valagussa
Management
Sara Santambrogio
CONCEPT
The Masterplan for the international event Euroflora 2025 is set within the renovated Waterfront del Levante, spanning approximately 80,000 square metres.The event is meticulously organised into four distinct areas, seamlessly connected by a unified concept. A pattern of paths and the development of certain iconic elements structure the exhibition narrative.
For the development of the masterplan, the project identifies three key concepts that link the landscape to art as a dialogue process between the horizontal and vertical planes.The three key concepts are:Crack-LightContamination-ReverberationLight-Heavy.These keyword pairs have been associated with a specific artistic procedure that recalls Burri’s work, Pollock’s work and origami. The latter imagines a ground that from flat becomes three-dimensional, light and transparent and characterises the key points of the exhibition route.
Strategies and References
The general approach of the design presented aims at identifying a clear and recognizable strategy capable of organizing an extensive layout.
An event such as Euroflora 2025 is caracterized by the contribution of many actors capable of giving meaning and enriching the sequence of spaces that will form the exhibition itinerary.
In this sense, although within a clear scheme, the project and the strategy presented are designed to enhance the different skills, the different cultures, the imaginative, technical and creative spirit of those who want to take part in the event.
In this framework it is now only possible to precisely imagine the multitude of personalities that will caracterize the spaces and the project is conceived in a choral way but with great attention to the potential contribution of the individual exhibitor.
For these reasons, particular attention was given to the conceptual phase of the masterplan presented here: it is understood as a succession and overlap of patterns capable to translate into the space selected keywords that define backbone of the proposal.
In imagining a fluid development of the dialogues and interactions that will lead to the final realization of the installation, this spatial structure will vibrate, including, the multitudes of suggestions that the event can offer.
The design process and the definition of the concept therefore started from the definition of some key concepts and the association of these with selected images from the world of art and nature. These images and suggestions therefore have not only the task of evoking a concept but rather and above all that of defining a strategy for translating the word into form, pattern, space.
The key concepts,understood as a pair of words, even with the opposit meanings, were identified as a response and reaction to the topic “Rebirth” and “Renewal”.
• Crack / Light
The idea that in every situation you can see a glimmer of growth; what may initially be considered a problem, fail, may indicate an unexpected way, new and better one to see the things in the world.
• Contamination/ Reflection
Natural and anthropized landscapes can never be defined with clear boundary.
Natural and anthropized landscapes can never be defined with a clear boundary. The same goes for different ethnic groups that inhabit the planet. Not only the boundaries are blurred, but in genetic terms it’s always possible sempre possibile to identify the character of group / ensemble in another, even if not directly adjacent. This presence is often if not always a reason of enrichment which reverberates and returns its value to a higher layer. From here the idea of the drop, which, also tiny , riverberates its shape and its substance.
• Light / Heavy
Such is nature, such is the plant world. It takes root on the ground and is being developed in the air. The tree is a light and at the same time a solid structure, ancored to the ground where it comes from and from where is feeded.
It is flexible and rigid at the same time, always different and always the same as flock of bird
These are the keywords that organise the concept at a general level. More specific keywords will be identified and their design implications described later in the text.
As mentioned above, the keywords allowed for the identification of specific artworks, identifiable by a clear and ‘iconic’ image, but also had an operational value in identifying possible overlapping and ‘hybridised’ dispositional matrices.
In this association and in dialogue with art, the aim was to identify works that had a clear procedural reflex and that clearly posed the themes of the relationship between the tactile and the visual and that of the dialogue between horizontal and vertical planes. The painting and the work of art maintain, in a measured ambiguity, the double valence; the work of art, the painting, which initially has an essentially pictorial value for the spectator, as a window/vertical section of a mainly visual nature, is inverted on the horizontal plane, acquiring a tactile dimension and one of continuous modification and interaction with the spectator.The concept of Crack/Light has its equivalent in the art world in the work of Alberto Burri and, in particular, in his research on the Cretto. At first glance, it conjures up the image of a parched land, torn by the sun for lack of water. However, it also raises the question of what lies behind the crack, which he leaves essentially dark and impenetrable. In today’s context, this concept can certainly refer to the frequent famines and increasing water scarcity caused by climate change, as well as the strong impact of modern man on the environment.
In this context, we also want to imagine the crack as a bearer of hope. Despite the scarcity of resources to be shared by an ever-increasing number of people and territories, the idea suggests that a prudent, wise and respectful use of these resources can still allow for adequate provision and sustainable development, which is not seen as stifling potential and impulses for personal and collective growth.
The ability to evoke images and references from Burri’s Cretto is reflected in the possibility of identifying a clear and recognisable pattern that immediately refers to the ground. This device pattern combines the large with the small in an organic design, ensuring the strong characterisation of the elements/atoms within an overall choral discourse.
The idea of contamination and reverberation finds its counterpart in the world of painting in Pollock’s work and, in particular, in the process he developed in his works. On the one hand, the artist turned the vertical plane, ‘the window through which the world can be seen’, with its essentially visual value, into a stepped, touched, tactile surface.
He works with colour as a layering of recognisable patterns, both individually and as a whole. Thus, within the work, the colours define a spatial continuity that is recognisable in the ‘phenomenal’ transparency of the elements/colours distributed across the canvas/table.
In this way, every part of the painting, every colour, always contains a ‘contamination’ of perhaps smaller, layered strokes/drops and thus a co-presence of signs. This is a fundamental concept that guides and will guide the development of the project. The idea, therefore, that from the overlapping, from the co-presence, an ‘unexpected’ and better situation can arise.
The project associates the idea of Origami with the theme of ‘Light/Heavy’. On the one hand, it takes up the idea of an everyday practice that can become an artistic expression, and on the other, it refers to a concept of lightness structured by simple procedures. In fact, the sheet of paper, a lightweight material by definition, has no structural character to begin with: the fold, the artificial operation that brings previously distant surfaces closer together, gives a lightweight material its own spatial conformation. In the project, this strategy was interpreted as a gradual transition from the mass of the ground to the lightness of the air.
The origami will take on a landmark role within the overall vision, identifying a map of points within the general design.
The project is based precisely on these concepts, transformed into images and ‘dispositive matrices’ born from their hybridisation, resulting in the generation of a sequence of images and strongly interconnected ‘reproduced landscapes’.
Within this structured yet flexible framework, it is possible to graft other concepts that are fundamental to the project and that will be specified throughout this report. They are:
Sustainability
Attention to reuse and resource management
Green spaces for play and education
The symbiosis between men and nature.
The general layout of the project is thus governed by the interaction of the concept of rupture with that of contamination, and the two patterns appear with different modulations and intensities throughout the exhibition. As mentioned above, within this design the origami, understood as elements rising from the ground to the sky, interpreting recognisable figures, will mark the focal points of the project.
Below is the specific description of the 4 settings, where it will be clarified how the general concepts outlined above find specific and punctual declinations.
The entire route will be marked by a series of bubbles/drops marked on the floor, which will take on volume and spatial character at selected points of ‘densification’. In particular, in a continuous dialogue with the other elements that characterise the exhibition route, these geometries will take the form of seating and furniture systems that are ‘inclusive’ and permeable to the flow of visitors.
