Our mission
The presence of an international scientific committee reflects and sustains a precise cultural orientation and a vibrant discussion on the themes of landscape and environmental ethics. This direction, recognisable in today’s highly diversified panorama of institutions attentive to the landscape, is declared by an explicit commitment to the idea of the ‘study and care of places’.
It takes shape through a work programme that includes two important stages held on an annual and biennial basis: the International Landscape Study Days and the International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Garden. From these two moments of in-depth study and debate, the cultural orientation, articulation and strategic profile of other areas of work develop organically, such as design workshops, seminars, scholarships and, in general, moments of confrontation and interaction with local realities and international referents.
Projects
A Foundation as a 'city of knowledge'
The close relationship between the cultural work of Fondazione Benetton and the layout of the places in which it takes place is a unique peculiarity in the Italian context. It emerges from the concatenation of buildings that form, in Treviso, a sort of “citadel of culture”, where both spaces for research and those dedicated to public cultural events belong to a single cycle of intellectual and material production.
This ‘uniqueness’ is given by the density of venues, which were all recovered from abandonment and decay and are marked by an architectural language that combines the new with the ancient: as a whole, these two express the philosophy of a foundation that places its work between sensitivity to history and contemporary research.
There is much evidence of this: the restoration of the Bomben and Caotorta palaces, with their garden open to the city; the exhibition space of Ca’ Scarpa; the Church of San Teonisto with its music-themed programmes; and, finally, Casa Cozzi with its farmland and the less urban location, but fully in tune with the spirit of our work and close to the education of young people.
All this reflects an openness towards the city of Treviso and to the world of education—an urban landscape in which the local community finds a welcoming space of learning and knowledge on the themes of landscape, architecture, music, and cinema.
The working method
In a more internal dimension to the work of the people who work at the Fondazione Benetton, these places represent the peculiarity of an entirely unique working method, which involves the conception and control of the entire cycle of cultural production, with sectors devoted to documentation – library, cartography, archives and donations -, communication and editorial work, the development of research and higher education programmes, seminars, the organization of cycles of public meetings, music and film festivals, and exhibitions.
In addition to an international scientific committee, Fondazione Benetton relies on contributions from scholarship holders, external researchers, and numerous collaborations with Italian and foreign universities and cultural institutions.
Opened to the public in 1990, the documentation centre is designed from the study and research needs of the Foundation’s scientific work. Over the course of time, it was joined by the organisation of the iconographic archive, the construction of the map library and the design of the archive.
