Can a building be understood as an abiotic support for the creation of habitats in which new relationships between Man and Nature are triggered?To answer this question, a large group of experts and professionals, architects, landscape architects, agronomists, botanists, artists, journalists, psychologists, sociologists and psychiatrists have developed a project that is divided into hybrid environments and spaces that recreate complex architectural ecosystems.The result is Human Forest, a project realized inside Palazzo Miccichè, a noble palace of the late nineteenth century as part of the SI ARCH FEST 'South Italy Architecture Festival', curated by Farm Cultural Park and winner of the 'Festival dell'Architettura' promoted by the “Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea del Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e per il turismo”.The attempt aims at the interaction between the building and the nature, understood no longer just as a set of architectural elements, but as a real support for the creation of living and dynamic environments, which evolve over time thanks to the relation of humans with animals and plants. A set of places that evoke other real or imaginary ones. An artifice that shifts attention to the civic role of men, the new citizen-gardeners, who by taking care of their immediate surroundings establish a new way of inhabiting the planet.The first act of the new narrative starts from the entrance to the palace, the environment, inaugurated during the festival, contains a real forest, the first cell of a Human Forest, a decompression space from the frenetic routine of the contemporary city and life, an place for inspiration where to tune into the world around us. The future reserves many other actions aimed at grafting plant life into every room of the building to build a manifesto aimed at all those abandoned, unfinished, forgotten places that populate Italy.
Human Forest is a project curated by Analogique with Laps Architecture
in collaboration with a transdisciplinary team composed by Michele Cannavó, Pierpaolo Zampieri, Lorenzo Nofroni, Alice Piciocchi, Luca Lagash, Marianna Guernieri, Manlio Speciale, Dario Panzica, Morgana Orsetta Ghini, Blueklein
in partnership with Piante Faro, RadicePura, Velux, SiMuA Palermo
Photo by Santo Eduardo Di Miceli