Stories Designing outdoor spaces: parks and playgrounds to (re)discover Text by Serena Scarpello Add to bookmarks Parco d’arte della Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, “Une machine à jouer”, Parasite 2.0 From the new permanent installation by Parasite 2.0 in Piedmont to the skatepark outside the Centre Pompidou designed by the artist Raphaël Zarka and local architect Jean-Benoît Vétillard A fun thing I’ll never do again. That’s what I think - quoting David Foster Wallace - whenever I pass through the gates of Italian parks. Of course, it also depends on the “playscape” in question. The term is used by Parasite 2.0 to define their incredible project in the hills of the Art Park run by the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. The founders of a design studio that works at the confluence between architecture, design and scenography, here Parasite 2.0 has created a permanent installation called “Une machine à jouer” consisting of two undulating grids, three large accessorized pipes and a swing, so creating a space for discovery and adventure. “Thanks to the slope of the ground, the modules invite boys and girls to climb and swing, learning to keep their balance, with their own skills and with the need to stay focused... Sanya Kantarovsky’s sculpture, positioned next to the installation, embodies a different way of practicing art and play together.” Parco d’arte della Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, “Une machine à jouer”, Parasite 2.0 To get an idea of the spectacularization that certain playgrounds can reach, just scroll through the images of the projects of the designers of Monstrum. You may have happened to notice this gigantic blue and yellow toy plane that flies above the clouds, which boys and girls from around the world can enter and exit from freely, imagining that they’re already or still traveling. Founded in 2003 by Ole Barslund Nielsen, Monstrum designs playgrounds in Copenhagen that it then exports worldwide, in the midst of nature, as in Memphis, or the center of crowded neighborhoods surrounded by skyscrapers, as in Hong Kong. Not only slides and swings of all shapes and sorts, but also gigantic animals and flowers, houses and castles, through and around which kids can explore the world and have fun. Needless to say, here you can hardly even see the shadow of plastic. Copenhagen, "The Sky High Flight Playground", Monstrum If we move to the colorful world of skateparks, right outside the Centre Pompidou, the artist Raphaël Zarka and the local architect Jean-Benoît Vétillard created a horseshoe-shaped skatepark featuring bold colors for last year’s Paris Olympics. Commissioned by the museum itself and supported by Nike, the public sculpture is open to skaters and visitors from around the world. 400 square meters of space with a semicircular bowl and a ramp 3.5 meters high. As the architecture and design magazine Dezeen reported, Zarka, who has designed numerous skateparks in the past, drew inspiration for his designs from the work of the mathematician Galileo. Giardino Ninfa Returning to Italy and shifting the attention to gardens in general, the Sacro Bosco of Bomarzo (https://www.sacrobosco.eu/) inspires a sense of wonder in kids when they see the “monsters”. This year it has been included in the annual ranking of the New York Times devoted to the world’s most beautiful gardens. Together with Bomarzo, the article features Ninfa, Villa Gamberaia, Villa d’Este in Tivoli, Villa Silvio Pellico in Moncalieri. In particular, Ninfa (https://www.giardinodininfa.eu/), with its history linked to the Caetani family and rich microclimate “is the kind of site that the 18th- and 19th-century English landscape designers were trying to create when they built faux ruins and follies and hermitages — but this is real,” write the six horticultural experts commissioned by the newspaper (Deborah Needleman, Tim Richardson, Louis Benech, Juliet Sargeant, Tom Delavan and Toshiko Mori). Villa Gamberaia north of Florence (https://www.villagamberaia.com/) “is the most magical garden”, “a divine place on a perfectly human scale”, so much so that it was much loved by the writer and poet Edith Wharton. Water is among the features that make these places even more spectacular, as in Villa d’Este at Tivoli, with its fountains, and Villa Pellico at Moncalieri, where the garden was designed by Russell Page, with a sequence of three stone-edged pools. Nervesa della Battaglia (TV), Parco giochi Ai Pioppi, Bruno Ferrin - Ph. Mattia Balsamini The list of Italian beauty spots would still be long, but to close I would like to mention this “hand-crafted amusement park”, as we described it in an article in issue 3 of Urbano, which came out in 2021. “Open on holidays only if there is good weather, it is an amusement park surrounded by nature, a tavern built in the shade of poplars, those same trees from which the project designed and hand-crafted by Bruno Ferrin takes its name”, as Cosimo Bizzarri wrote. Ferrin is now over 80 years old, but he was barely 32 when he started and a yeast merchant by trade. “With his wife Marisa, he a piece of land right here, on Montello – a green panettone between the Treviso plain and the Pre-Alps, a few kilometers from the Piave – with the idea of opening a tavern there. To attract families, he became convinced that it would be a good idea to build a swing for the kids. He went to a village blacksmith, who told him that he was too busy to help, but that Bruno was free to use his welding machine. He had never done anything of the sort before: bare-chested, in sandals and shorts, he worked all afternoon, and at night he was unable to sleep, because of his aching eyes and chest. After the swing, he built the slide, and then the roundabout, the trampolines and the wheel inspired by Vitruvian man, in a whirlwind of ideas and projects that over the decades have progressively taken shape and colonized the forest. Today more than 40 rides stand out amid the trees, including the cableway, the pendulum, the cages and a 60-meter-high slide, all made by Bruno working completely independently.” A free and artisanal playground with a tavern in tow, a fairytale place for both adults and children. A fun thing definitely to do again. And a small eulogy of sheerly Italian know-how.
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