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Architects: C&P Architetti
- Area: 115 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Marcello Mariana
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Manufacturers: Magis
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Lead Architects: Luca Cuzzolin, Elena Pedrina
Text description provided by the architects. In the most introverted part of the Salesian Don Bosco center in Mestre, the facades are composed of each other, drawing a void, destined over the years to be a garden. A garden consisting of a green lawn and inhabited only by trees of different species and sizes planted here randomly, without an overall design. This space appeared as an island built inside the void defined by the buildings and separated from them by an almost impassable ring of asphalt, crossed by cars and also used as a parking lot.
In 2020, with the arrival of Covid, that green island appeared as a possibility capable of hosting outside those activities that could no longer be carried out inside due to the bans on gatherings. The uninhabited garden thus became, once again spontaneously, an inside outside. A temporary pavilion is placed on the lawn, which is used as an outdoor classroom and as a meeting place. The students quickly took over not only the pavilion but the entire garden, expertly placing chairs and tables in the shaded areas and with their movements drawing the paths that would become the traces from which to start the redevelopment project. The project, started in 2022, did nothing but structure, consolidate and reorganize the traces of practices that have given new meaning to that place by inhabiting it starting from 2020.
The elements that make up the project are the metal and glass pavilion placed in the same place as the temporary one, the wooden platforms, which became bases for chairs and tables, positioned in the shaded areas identified by the students, the paths traced by the movements and only “hardened” by plates in recycled and draining material, the replacement of some trees and the cutting of those suffering because they were not suitable for the place due to their size, the addition of flower beds as a new element next to the lawn and trees and the lighting created with new light fixtures.
The garden breaks its perimeter and invades the asphalt strip that surrounds it, eroding its surface, thus leaving space for new flowerbeds with organic shapes. The residue of the asphalt strip, which allows access exclusively to emergency vehicles, from a separating element becomes a place of connection between the garden and the school's porticos and the object of future street art actions.
