Sezioni del paesaggio italiano (second-hand)

This research, conducted in 1996 by Gabriele Basilico (photographs) and Stefano Boeri (project), examines the disordered yet significant changes that have taken place in recent years across the Italian landscape. It is not so much the large buildings, neighborhoods, or new infrastructures that have transformed the face of our territory, but rather a multitude of isolated and clustered structures, such as villas, warehouses, shopping centers, apartment blocks, garages, and workshops. These are modest constructions, often incongruously adjoined, scattered across the landscape in a disorderly manner, expressing small fragments of our society and economy: the family, the small business, retail, the store, the club, the warehouse. A multitude of structures that, reflecting our customs and modes of production, have developed in the indifference of politics and cultivated architecture, literally altering the appearance and nature of the Italian territory, from north to south and across all regions. In search of local particularities, Stefano Boeri identified six portions of the Italian territory, starting from the centers of certain large urban areas (Milan, Mestre-Venice, Florence, Rimini-Riccione, Naples, Gioia Tauro) and extending outward. Gabriele Basilico traversed these six “sections of the Italian landscape,” 50 km long and 12 km deep, in a photographic reading that reveals a tendency toward homogenization while highlighting the extraordinary morphological variety of the Italian landscape. The project was subsequently presented in the Italian pavilion at the 6th Venice International Architecture Biennale.