Can forests be welcoming? When humans enter ‘without knocking’, do they breach the balance of nature? We asked Francesco Padovan, architect from Noa, the Bolzano-based firm behind many stylish and sensitive hotel projects set in nature.
Forests are places of connection. Between water and soil, climate and atmosphere, animals and micro-organisms. Between human beings. In many cases, working on woods is a way of mending ties: with the territory, with time, with the other inhabitants of this planet. Here are eight virtuous stories.
Only fifty-six of the hundred wooden books made in the 19th century by the gardener Eugenio Trevisan to classify trees have survived, and are kept at the University of Padua. Restored and on display to the public, these are the central focus of Xilogenesi, the project involving contemporary artists.
The Japanese maestro calls on architecture to recover the relationship between humans and forest: one model is his installation Domino 3.0, presented at the Biennale in Venice, in which felled tree trunks and artificial intelligence work together to create an organic structure.
Over forty years ago, with visionary sensitivity, two Italian architects conducted far-reaching, in-depth research into trees, understood as primary elements in urban and landscape design. humus followed their tracks to find out more about their thoughts and their heritage.
They are among us. And they greatly outnumber us. Three thousand billion individuals, grouped in millions of communities, organised into authentic nations. But we hardly notice their presence. They – trees – in their communities – the forests – live, grow, die and regenerate in silence. But more than ever before, we realise that we can’t do without them.