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TOPOTEK 1

Grow Together Grow Green

TOPOTEK 1 presents Grow Together Grow Green at the Landscape Festival 2023 in Bergamo, Italy
Alessandro Villa
Alessandro Villa
Ort
Bergamo
Gebäudekategorie
Sonstiges
Bauvorhaben
Temporaer
Jahr der Fertigstellung
2023
Material Fassade
Metall
Climate change is as much of a social issue as it is scientific — it must be addressed through community participation and collective action. At the Landscape Festival 2023 in Bergamo, this year’s cultural capital of Italy, the installation Grow Together Grow Green by Topotek 1 serves as a physical and figurative framework for joint social effort to demonstrate that change is possible with incremental urban afforestation. It builds upon the festival’s motto “Grow Together” by inviting participants to also “Grow Green.” The design concept is elaborated on three levels: deconstruction, activation, and growing green; built as a modular structure of scaffolding and covered with seedlings of species that are typical to the region.

The use of scaffolding, a lightweight and reusable system, constitutes a strategy for the installation’s primary structure which is not only easy to assemble and disassemble, but will be reused for other projects. The seedlings that initially green the location, gradually dissipate as visitors register to take them with for planting across the city. Registration establishes a sense of responsibility, as registrants are called upon to take care of the seedling and to document the process via the event instagram/website: from collection at the event to the final planting in one’s own garden or elsewhere in the municipality.

The invitation to take the seedlings home generates an enduring performance rather than just a temporary installation. As a vivid artistic space and at the same time a social tool, the project rethinks the way we relate to each other and influence our environment, emphasizing the potential of a communal process dependent on one’s individual actions. The outcome is an expansive intervention that can also be repurposed in different locations and is considered complete only through collective and mindful participation.

A juncture will be the screening of Homo Urbanus, a film series by the artists-filmmakers Bêka & Lemoine, invited by Topotek 1 to further encourage the purpose of the installation as a stage for community gatherings.