Installation Grow Together Grow Green, Landscape Festival 2023 in Bergamo

© Federico Buscarino

TOPOTEK 1 presents Grow Together Grow Green at Landscape Festival 2023 in Bergamo, Italy
Climate change is as much of a social issue as it is scientific — it must be addressed
through community participation and collective action. At the Landscape Festival 2023 in
Bergamo, this year’s cultural capital of Italy, the installation Grow Together Grow Green
by Topotek 1 serves as a physical and figurative framework for joint social effort to
demonstrate that change is possible with incremental urban afforestation. It builds upon
the festival’s motto “Grow Together” by inviting participants to also “Grow Green.” The
design concept is elaborated on three levels: deconstruction, activation, and growing
green; built as a modular structure of scaffolding and covered with seedlings of species
that are typical to the region.

The use of scaffolding, a lightweight and reusable system, constitutes a strategy for the
installation’s primary structure which is not only easy to assemble and disassemble, but
will be reused for other projects. The seedlings that initially green the location, gradually
dissipate as visitors register to take them with for planting across the city. Registration
establishes a sense of responsibility, as registrants are called upon to take care of the
seedling and to document the process via the event instagram/website: from collection at
the event to the final planting in one’s own garden or elsewhere in the municipality.

The invitation to take the seedlings home generates an enduring performance rather than
just a temporary installation. As a vivid artistic space and at the same time a social tool,
the project rethinks the way we relate to each other and influence our environment,
emphasizing the potential of a communal process dependent on one’s individual actions.
The outcome is an expansive intervention that can also be repurposed in different
locations and is considered complete only through collective and mindful participation.

A juncture will be the screening of Homo Urbanus, a film series by the artists-filmmakers
Beka & Lemoine, invited by Topotek 1 to further encourage the purpose of the installation
as a stage for community gatherings.

Project Data

Landscape Architecture: Topotek 1

Context: Landscape Festival – I Maestri del Paesaggio
Location: Piazza Vecchia, Bergamo, Italy
Date: September 7-24, 2023
Silent Cinema: Homo Urbanus by Beka
Screening: September 16-20, 2023

Project Website

Published on September 11, 2023

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