Su&Giu - Un giardino Pop Up

When a road wants to be a garden.

The intervention is part of the contemporary debate on the theme of public space and common goods, particularly with regard to relations with parts of the city, some of them great architectures, but not exempt from phenomenons of degradation and marginality.

In Palermo the debate on the historical center is always alive, even if the recovery of the historical city is still not completed. The historic center of Palermo is magnificence and marginality together, a fusion of societies and communities that share the prestigious historical spaces and fabrics of the capital and at the same time inhabit and live those parts of the city that still present the scars of the 1943 bombing. Ballaro' is one of these places, bordering the wonders of the pedestrianized Cassaro (Corso Vittorio Emanuele), permeated by unsolved ruins, where it still lives an authentic population, today enriched by foreign communities that have chosen Palermo as a place of life and that discover in it forgotten spaces.

Ballaro' Significa Palermo is a committee of many associations/organizations that work to promote these places (www.ballarosignificapalermo.it), and that have structured a program of events to rediscover some wonders, and arouse new interests in parts of the historic city that do not always have the attention they deserve.

The focus of the project is to think about public space and common goods, whose national day is celebrated on May 13th. We choosed to intervene on the Salita Raffadali for various reasons: the road, built on the bank of the former river Kemonia (as evidenced by the difference in height), ancient river now covered but still rich in water underground, has been opened in the 17th century at the request of the Jesuits of the nearby Chiesa di Casa Professa, eager to reach more easily the foundation axis of the Cassaro, the main street of Palermo that connects mountains and sea.

Flanked by the beautiful noble buildings of the Princes of Raffadali and Palazzo Ugo delle Favare, the road was in poor condition, despite its prestigious location and its noble history. Under the asphalt mantle part of the hexagonal bases is still visible in the nearby Vicolo Castelnuovo, the users are often distracted and inattentive, abusing sidewalks as a parking  (forbidden) of vehicles. The occasion of the initiatives promoted by the BSP committee pushed us to think about this place, important  to many people from Palermo who have studied and lived around there for the presence of the historical sites of the Faculties of Law, Architecture and Political Sciences.

The initial request is to set up a "infiorata" (flowers carpet) , also because of the road's perspective, but the design group evaluate this suggest as unsustainable for times and costs. The project then begins around the idea of ​​manipulating the theme of the road, as it is only a crossing path, a concept that is pre-eminent for the absence of shops or other places of interest. Few doors open on the climb

The central theme is that of the construction of a new urban landscape, which can be welcomed by the residents, that combines the presence of vegetation, with a new function (contemplative pause, aggregation space), and the rediscovery of the road as a new social perspective urban, scenic. This condition takes shape with the location at the ends of the road of some containers with different height, where to host new plants: in the center is placed a small podium and a sequence of staggered seats shapes simulates a small "auditorium" that completely overwhelms the theme of the road allowing visitors to enjoy a new perspective, to stop and chat, to enjoy small collective events (readings, concerts).

At the base of the installation is the confessional: another small wooden device with holes that direct the visual (or photographic) perspective to varying heights, which intrigues and makes adults and children entertained.

The vegetable theme takes place on parallel and intersecting planes: on the one hand the idea of ​​low maintenance (with the presence of grasses such as the festuca glauca and ginerium), on the other the food theme of the garden through the aromatic (rosemary, sage) that are accompanied by the synergistic marigold, and to end the blooms of the verbenas, the salvia splendens and lavender stoechas that make parterre to 24 wonderful specimens of gingko biloba, an ancient tree of renowned qualities that - with its green foliage - constitutes a system of scenes that build the new perspective, always different.

The need for immediacy and the desire to keep the costs very low have made it possible to use wooden materials such as OSB panels and strips of XLAM with which the furnishings were made. The parterre is entrusted to the artistic work, realized with the collaboration of the students of LandLab (University of Palermo) and the volunteers of Orto Capovolto, with the aim of creating the new landscape of the climb, a 2.0 "infiorata", replacing the monotony of the bitumen with an explosion of colors and traces that visitors and inhabitants can feel their own, identifying with them. We have observed children and teenagers running along the zig-zag of the pictorial parterre.