Inside and through. Studies and Investigations on Fondazione Benetton

Giulia Marino

Landscape scholarships – edition 2023/2024

subject area: Theories and policies for landscape

tutors: Simonetta Zanon, head of Landscape projects area; Luigi Latini, chairman of the Scientific Committee of Fondazione Benetton

The research has focused on the Fondazione itself, with a twofold aim: on the one hand, to portray the complexity and significance of the activities carried out in recent decades, as a whole and in their interrelationships; on the other hand, to highlight the relationships between the Fondazione’s work and some crucial issues in the contemporary debate on landscape and garden transformations.

By moving in two different and complementary directions – inside and through – it is intended to craft a new narrative of the Fondazione’s activities, projects and perspective on landscape and garden.

Inside the Fondazione, trying to trace the background and method of (almost) forty years of work both on the landscape and on the “study and care of places”. Through the Fondazione’s work, reading it transversally and adopting it as a perspective for the observation and the interpretation of the themes and trajectories of contemporary debate.

The outcomes of the research also run on a double track. In fact, some critical reflections – on the method, the vocabulary and the trajectories of the research – go hand in hand with the development of tools designed to suggest and inspire a new narrative of the work of this cultural institution, similar to a lively and hard-working workshop, curious and rooted in its territory.

 

Giulia Marino (1992) is an architect and PhD in Landscape and Environment. She graduated in Urban Design at Roma Tre University with a project for the open spaces of the eastern area of Rome’s Grande Raccordo Anulare. At the Department of Architecture and Design (Sapienza University of Rome), she defended her PhD thesis entitled “Landscape between the lines. Topics and trajectories in 20th century Italian architectural magazines” and worked as research fellow in the scientific disciplinary sector of landscape architecture. Her main research topics are: the relationship between urban planning and the design of open spaces, the architecture of behaviour and playful interaction devices in public space, and the editorial product seen both as a research object and as a research tool.