Designing a low cost landscape
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Within the framework of the ongoing initiatives in Treviso to redevelop Prato della Fiera, the “Il Prato in Fiera” group and Fondazione Benetton organise a public meeting with Manfredi Leone, professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Palermo, main player and scientific advisor of the Parco Uditore experience.
The experience dealt with the rediscovery of a sliver of traditional farming landscape that survived the ransack of Palermo, an Opuntia garden which, after decades of neglect among the houses of the neighbourhood with the same name, has become a low cost participatory urban park, thanks to the commitment of a group of residents, students, professors and volunteers.
Through a process in progress that started in October 2010 and is always open to new contributions, Parco Uditore today represents a symbol for the city’s social redemption, and an essential landmark for the community. The method applied – innovative, flexible and low-cost – offers interesting hints for an ethically and socially responsible landscape practice, able to offer tangible answers to a number of situations that are similar in many ways, dealing with decline and neglect but which, as is the case of “our own” Prato della Fiera, can now rely on the local administration’s attention and on the will, imagination and care of many residents. With these underlying assumptions, the “Il Prato in Fiera” group has come up with a twinning of Parco Uditore and Prato della Fiera, a symbolic gesture of vicinity and shared ideas which Manfredi Leone and Dario Brollo, the group’s representative, will share with the town at the end of the meeting.
The event is introduced by Simonetta Zanon, Fondazione Benetton, and Maria Buoso, “Il Prato in Fiera” group.