VIVAI DIFFUSI

VIVAI DIFFUSI is a project that promotes urban vegetation as a tool of urban renewal.

The initiative is inspired by the examples of tactical urbanism and land art as means to raise awareness and it uses installations of temporarily potted trees firstly to improve the general quality of life, secondly to try limiting the effect of global warming but also to start restoring the relationship between artificial spaces and natural ones, interrupted by human intervention.

The project’s name, “widespread plant nurseries” (VIVAI DIFFUSI) is explanatory of the initiative concept: temporarily potted trees, that like in a plant nursery “wait” provisionally before being definitely placed. Equally, VIVAI DIFFUSI in Chiasso (CH) spread trees installations across the most fragile urban areas in terms of livability, presence of urban greenery and urban heat island effect, that revolve around Corso San Gottardo, the main axis of the urban center. The trees of VIVAI DIFFUSI, will be then integrated in other redevelopment projects in Chiasso.

VIVAI DIFFUSI is inspired by the recent Swiss cantonal guidelines that aim to spread the so-called “qualitative development of settlements”, it has received the consulting support from the Office of Nature and Landscape, the patronage of OTIA and the Switzerland Mobility Association. VIVAI DIFFUSI started in Chiasso as the pilot project and it has been accepted by many other municipalities with which we are planning the most appropriate installation setup to improve the usability of public spaces. The project raise awareness of the role of urban greenery, its power to confer quality and identity to bare and anonymous areas and it helps citizens to imagine the renewal of these spaces through a provisory, cheap and fast installation of potted trees that turn empty concrete fields into more livable and attractive spaces.

The vision of urban greenery promoted by VIVAI DIFFUSI leaves behind the purely decorative role and promotes its development as a true urban infrastructure, that will be able to create a green net in order to encourage slow mobility and urban biodiversity, making a step closer to the 15 minute-city model.