In the wilderness

Sara Marini
In the wilderness

The wilderness returns both as an image, capable of summarizing the characters of places and the ways of crossing them, and as a reality: the advance of forests in some territories and the presence of wild and wilderness areas in the city are concrete and ever-expanding facts.
The two planes of reading the wilderness, the one that takes it as a figuration to interpret the real and the one that analyzes it as an overt space, call for the codification of tools and ways to inhabit this unknown place.
The return of the wilderness marks the return of a new sense of the "archaic," of yet another mingling of architecture and the land, a union aware of the conflict between reason and the uncanny, between adventure and comfort, between memories of the city and modes of life proper to the forest. The term "forest" connotes precise and concrete realities and multiple imaginaries, but it also indicates the possible trajectory of future time as much as the turning toward a distant past: it is an arrow whose direction establishes the connotations of a possible new contrat naturel.

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François Rabelais
Sylva

Short excerpt from François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Einaudi, Turin 1993, p. 55.

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Guido Scarabottolo
Grovigli

The visual contribution presents a sequence of ten illustrations made by the artist at different times and for different purposes through overlapping procedures. The series includes a collection of drawings grouped together and printed one on top of the other for a newspaper insert, a "semi-finished work" for a novel by Luis Sepúlveda, a portrait of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the cover of a catalog, and other experiments, some of which are as yet without a destination.

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Alessandro Rocca, Jacopo Leveratto
Thoreau and Kaczynski, the media hut. Constructing a Manifesto

The article analyzes two exemplary huts, the one that Henry David Thoreau built on the shore of Walden Lake in 1842 and the one in which the Unabomber has been retreating, since 1971, in the woods of Montana, to highlight how this type of construction represents not only the most immediate means of living according to an exclusively individual order, but also the most essential formalization of a personal manifesto, a statement about the meaning of dwelling. If, as Timothy Morton has written, "Anthropocene ends the concept nature: a stable, nonhuman background to (human) history" (Timothy Morton, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Term Anthropocene, in "Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry," vol. 1, no. 2, 2014, p. 1), every exile and escape from society becomes an exploration, sometimes unintentional, of nature, which becomes an ideological device. And the medium by which this exploration is historically accomplished is the hut, an anonymous and utilitarian project that is all the more effective as it succeeds in being a non-architecture, a quasi-nothingness in which symbolic impact is inversely proportional to architectural originality.

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Giovanni Corbellini
Double Why. 2Y House by Sebastián Irarrázaval

The 2Y House on Lake Colico in Chile develops a branching plant that sits on the ground and creeps through the trees. Sebastián Irarrázaval explains this peculiar and idiosyncratic project of his as an adaptive response to the site and its conditions. However, from the rational and reassuring surface of his narrative seep hints of a more layered ambiguity, of a duplicity readable on many levels and already contained in the title of the project, as well as in the settlement solution it captures with extreme synthesis. The villa thus interrogates the intermediate space between numerous antinomies: inside-outside, artifice-nature, wild-domestic, biomorphic-anthropomorphic, alphabetic-ideographic...

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Paradigm Ariadné
Wild interiors

The article delves into the evolution of wall decorations, building a theoretical background from rock art to the wild interiors of the digital age through the Pinterest Wallpaper project. Comparing the early stage of the Internet to an indistinct ensemble of content, parallels can be drawn between the "wild" and the world wide web 1.0. Confirming this position, the authors interpret Pinterest as a form of cataloging a primordial internet, just as Darwinism transformed sylva from something mysterious into something known. Although it adopts the same layout as the virtual space, Pinterest Wallpaper repurposes the use and format of ancient plant-patterned wallpapers and, by mediating the immateriality of digital and the substance of analog, collects and "captures" the wild unknown on our walls.

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Lara García Díaz
In the Forest of Marginalization: Recetas Urbanas and the Cañada Real Galiana Sociocommunity Center

What is the meaning of care within "socialization structures"? The use of social architecture or "socialization structures" to foster social mediation in contexts of institutional neglect where the rules of informality reign has increased exponentially. To think of "socialization structures" in these terms is to support the relational role of architecture, in which self-construction is used to strengthen cooperation. However, this carries with it ethical implications. The text focuses on the design studio Recetas Urbanas and, in particular, the construction of the Cañada Real Galiana Sociocommunity Center (Madrid, Spain). The objective is twofold: to use Joan Tronto's four-step model of care to analyze the relational dimension of "socialization structures" and to claim how the tools within the reach of current Spanish public administrations cause a decline in attention to informal spaces.

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Dario Gentili, Federica Giardini
Wildwood and state of nature: kinesthetic variations for the contemporary

In philosophy and beyond, the image of the "wilderness"-both as a symbol and as a hermeneutic and category of thought- belongs to the ancient Latin world and still plays a fundamental role in early modernity, in that span from Dante's "selva oscura" to Giambattista Vico's "ingens sylva." The Vico conception of the wilderness is a few decades after Thomas Hobbes' thematization of that "state of nature," which is opposed to the political order, as a feral condition, of threat to survival that, as an anthropological reference, takes societies considered at the time "primitive" or "savage." The dualistic partition would thus oppose civilization to barbarism, politics to ungoverned condition, security to threat. This contribution aims to reopen what appears to be an ideological selection of the European cultural heritage for the purposes of contemporary governing policies of the current anthropological crisis.

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Emanuele Coccia
The Common Nature. Beyond the city and the forest

Far from being the expression of a higher life, every city is a collective psychic pathology, experienced in an individual and shared way that consciously modifies its environment in order to empower itself. A city, moreover, is an instrument of projection of another, different space, in which all other species rejected and enclosed in outer space are regarded as "forest," from the Latin foris, "outside," "outside of." On the other hand, the term "forest" should be translated, literally, as "refugee camp": urban psychopathology allows us to confuse a form of forced exile with a form of primitive happiness and, above all, allows us to miss the fact that every city presupposes a prior genocide of all species that inhabited the space now occupied by humans. This pathology does not represent a destiny. And as in all forms of illnesses of the spirit, the symptoms are both expressions of discomfort and foreshadowings of a possible way out. It is therefore by working on the symptoms that an alternative to the opposition between the city and the forest, between civilization and the wild, can be found.

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Nieves Mestre
Over-Designed Ecologies

In view of the concrete demonstration and social recognition of the climate crisis, ecological design has radically shifted from dissident practices to official policies, recovering themes such as renaturalization or Nature-Based Solutions for cities. These solutions are ostensibly "inspired or sustained" by a kind of domesticated nature, considered external to urban phenomena and mobilized as a healing patch to their climate crisis.
In the face of this approach, alternative agendas claim both the devolution of a wilderness into cities in the form of poorly designed environments and a kind of "dark ecology," far removed from the aesthetics of green. The contemporary reconfiguration of the concept of "nature" in design discourse constitutes a significant shift from visual metaphors to metabolic design. The environmental crisis demands the creation of integrated analogies rather than imitations of nature, interweaving the organic and technological layers of design.

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Agostino De Rosa
In the woods, one night, at the origin of images

An illustration, taken from an optics textbook of the last century proposes a suggestive hypothesis, according to which the first dark room in the history of planet Earth was configured spontaneously, during the Carboniferous, when human beings had yet to make their appearance. This is also a perturbing hypothesis because the forest, in this foundational view of planetary iconography, would become the place where the epiphany of vision is needed, without it having yet been born. Echoes of such an approach can be found in the work of some contemporary artists, Agnes Denes, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, and Massimo Sordi. In their works, the wilderness becomes a reflection of an unconventional image of knowledge in which spatial and temporal boundaries disappear, becoming a sounding board for profound spiritual instances.

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Barbara Boifava
Wilderness as art

In studies of the idea of nature permeating American culture in the early 1970s, Halprin is often referred to as a pioneer for his ability to make the processes of nature palpable and to accommodate the aesthetics of wilderness in landscape design. His talk at the eighth biennial conference devoted to wilderness, held in San Francisco, California, in March 1963, introduces a new environmental conception and an unprecedented creative perception of nature translated into the design of urban space, but above all makes explicit the profound conviction that the preservation of unspoiled nature can only be ensured by the shrewd planning of cities. The urban issue is enriched with a new poetics of nature that promotes a harmonious growth of the metropolitan dimension, based on a recognized ecological paradigm and functional aesthetics that allow for a renewed and more effective meaning of open space in the proper form of public space.

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Lawrence Halprin
Wilderness and the City

Translation by Barbara Boifava of Lawrence Halprin's talk, Wilderness and the City, at the 8th Biennial Wilderness Conference Tomorrow's Wilderness organized by the Sierra Club in San Francisco in 1963.

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Luigi Latini
Domestic and Wild. A journey through the Malus sieversii forests of the Tien Shan, Kazakhstan

The city of Almaty, capital of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic under the name of Alma Ata until 1991, the year of the country's independence, has an intense relationship with the apple tree. The forests of the wild apple tree, now visible in the Transilian Alatau in an elevation range of 900 to 1,800 meters above sea level, have enjoyed a close relationship with the city in the past, perceptible even in the urban landscape itself, as a result of planning that provided for a systematic presence of tree plants, including the wild apple tree, in the 19th century. A journey in the direction of this city, in the center of Asia, the starting point for the exploration of one of the most significant areas for the presence of Malus siversii, takes on the character, also in the light of more recent scientific expeditions, of a countercurrent journey, poised between different cultures and geographical contexts that are in strong evolution.

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Lorenza Gasparella
Parallel Worlds in the Wilderness. Tracks, footprints, flights to follow

Animals travel, each species on different distances and trajectories. They may meet or continue along parallel routes. Some more than others populate an imaginary that generates antithetical attitudes of extreme attraction or irrational fear, similarly to their habitat, the forest, whose progressive advance to the doorstep, while on the one hand may be a renewal in the quality of habitation, on the other hand may rekindle the fear of the forest and its inhabitants. Following them, observing them, is the first step in experimenting with forms of understanding and attempts at cohabitation. Often this results in pursuit because the certainty of having decoded signals and behaviors is constantly challenged. Each world, while remaining relatively incomprehensible to others, continues to coexist in the same place and at the same time, generating conflicts and contradictions, but also possibilities for reconciliation.

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Andrea Pertoldeo
Viaggio in un roseto

The visual contribution investigates the potential of the photographic series as a tool to translate the design of natural forms. Framing the microgeography of a rose garden suspended in anticipation, the photographer proceeds by spatiotemporal fragments in order to render minimal movements of bodies and variations of light.
The short accompanying text by Antonello Frongia invites critical reflection: does photography record or re-construct the spatial order of nature?

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Liz Flyntz
Ant Farm's Visions for 2020. A Wilderness of Tomorrow

Ant Farm's 1973 exhibition 20/20 Vision frames predictions for 2020 as a synthesis of four key dates-two from the past (1939 and 1955) and two from the future (1984 and 2020)-that exemplify in their joint imagination the nexus of a century of American history between culture, ambition, politics, industry, creativity, technological innovation, and (ultimately) domination and destruction. The exhibition is presented in the state of Texas, the heart of the U.S. oil industry, during the international fuel crisis caused by U.S. interventions in foreign countries. On display are "ready-mades" of vehicles and fuel pumps, collages of memorabilia collected from previous Ant Farm projects, and two new works: Kohoutek: Dollhouse of the Future, a Barbie house-scale model of a techno-dystopia in which giant insects breed an all-female colony of humans for their nourishment, and Convention City, an architectural proposal for the 1976 presidential conventions in which politics merges with a television game show set.

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Francesca Santamaria
Living in the Real Bosco di Capodimonte

The Real Bosco di Capodimonte, open to the public since 1952, is a perfect example of an architectural and environmental asset, but it is also the green lung of Naples, one of the most populous cities in Italy. Born in the 18th century as a royal hunting reserve, today it has an ambiguous identity, poised between suburban forest, historic garden and public green. Its history from the postwar period to the present tells of the conflict between the material needs of its users and those of heritage protection, of the ongoing tension between man and nature within an urban forest, of changes in the management of environmental assets, and reflects at the same time the vicissitudes of the city. To trace the history of the Real Bosco, understood as a natural, institutional and social space, we drew on public and private archives and interrogated heterogeneous sources, including judicial and journalistic reporting, as well as the family and personal memories of the community that passed through it.

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Fabio Bozzato
Caracas, like it was never there

There is no magic realism in Latin America. Least of all in Caracas. Telling it in chiaroscuro, for example, is not a figure of speech: it just means following the rhythm of its blackouts. Here, too, as elsewhere, we say "me importa un bledo," but the bledo here really grew. The stardust is real: it covers Urdaneta with an unctuous blanket, there where the chicest of Latin capitals once throbbed.
Caracas' unconscious is a huge river, casting the shadow of its desires from hundreds of miles away. Its consciousness, rather dirty, is another river, almost a rivulet, that marks it from west to east. The mountain that dominates it is a reassuring reference and an ambiguous barrier.
By day the Caracas sky is a feast of guacamayas, by night a merry-go-round of gunfire and cacerolazos. Caracas is a nightmare and a wonder, a wild and sophisticated contraption. As you walk you may come across a kinetic work of art. As you're running from police tear gas, you may come across two arms where you can take refuge for a night.

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Harold Fallon, Amanda F. Grzyb, Thomas Montulet
Guinda

On May 14, 1980, during the Salvadoran civil war (1980-1992), armed forces, National Guard and ORDEN paramilitary troops killed 600 civilians in Las Aradas, Chalatenango. The guindas led the civilians to this historically demilitarized area, where they sought refuge from the military tactic of burning the land. According to one survivor, guindas means "running aimlessly, walking day and night, sleeping in the bush in the open, enduring hunger and heavy rains, hiding to avoid being found by the army and paramilitaries to save one's life." Today, communities gather annually to commemorate the victims in critical actions of collective mourning and remembrance. The article explores the definition of guinda through the testimonies, movement, landscape, commemoration, and memorial design stages in which the authors are currently involved. This research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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Josep-Maria Garcia-Fuentes
Habitat

Both the word and the concept of "habitat" are modern. Habitat is neither a natural nor an artificial condition, but both. Habitat research made its way into the sciences before the word took on the conventional meaning of natural habitation. At the same time, zoos quickly became privileged institutions for investigating both the scientific and popular sides of habitat. Indeed, the construction of Penguin's Pond by the Tecton Company and Berthold Lubetkin in 1934 was linked to the pioneering scientific leadership of the Royal Zoological Society in London. Original analysis of the project reveals Lubetkin's unique research program to make architecture and nature coexist, as revealed by his attention to the shadows cast by tree leaves on the Pond's white walls. Lubetkin's works remind us of the modern origin of the word habitat: the wild and the artificial complement each other to recreate the ideal habitat for every animal, including humans.

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Ishita Jain
Immanence

The dictionary entry defines "immanence" by identifying the tangled forests within Glasgow's Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre as its creative energy. The article argues that aesthetic work must possess a creative structure immanent to itself. Sharmanka is an assemblage of the multiple places traversed by mechanical-sculptor Eduard Bersudsky as he explored, as a maverick artist, the spaces of making and exhibiting art in Soviet Russia. Bersudsky occupied the spaces designed by the regime and transformed their functions; this action produced changes in the sculptor's subjective states as well. This voice establishes immanence as a secret sylvan force with the ability to release the artist's multiple subjective states in his work, transforming it into a lived work. Sharmanka makes visible the immanent subjectivity of the architect of the work as the aesthetic object itself, without any interpretive mediation.

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Nicola Di Croce
Opacity

Opacity is the property of a body not to let light pass through it, it is a veil that rests on objects interrupting their transparency. This is why the opaque disorients and at the same time pushes the observer to seek alternative paths of knowledge: to abandon the primacy of sight in order to approach the discovery of the world through the other senses, through critical listening to the environment. The text questions the difficulty of looking at the world as an object that is always recognizable and representable, and declares the need to devise novel strategies for reading the opaque, capable of interpreting the effects of human actions and inaugurating new political ecologies. In the absence of clear visible coordinates, listening then presents itself as a device particularly suited to interpret the effects and affects, that is, the impacts of human action on the everyday.

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Annalisa Metta
Pan

In myths, monsters are supernatural encounters between human and wild. Pan is among the most eloquent, because of his aberrant appearance and the scream that casts panic fear. Man and goat, god of arcadia and the underworld, Pan is the joyous ferocity of dissimilarity and embodies evolutionary mutations that break the limits assigned to species. On him in the Christian age is modeled the appearance of the devil, a warning that the encounter with the wild is irresistible but dangerous. Pan is the king of a city that blurs any demarcation between nature and civilization: he has no remorse of urbanity, no regret of Eden; he welcomes all manifestations of the living and finds quality in the frictions of co-presences. Its value lies in this complexity, in the interweaving of the forbidden and the transgressive, in impregnable combinations of autopoietic ecological and social processes, where we discover ourselves longing for surprise, pleasure, mixture, uncertainty, otherness, metamorphosis.

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Alessandro Gabbianelli
Quarto

In the post-industrial city, the abandonment of industrial sites and infrastructure has given rise to a multitude of spaces characterized by a new nature, what German ecologist Ingo Kowarik has called "fourth nature." This refers to pioneer, allochthonous plant species that arise and grow spontaneously within an urban context, increasing its biodiversity and giving rise to new self-organizing ecosystems. Thanks to an important process of fascination with the urban wild, contemporary landscape design has for some time been exploring different strategies to exploit the ecological, fruitive and social potential of urban sites where the fourth nature is present. The transformation of the former Südgelände train station in Berlin is one of the most representative examples. The park's design has been able to re-conceptualize and emphasize the fourth nature by making it the main material around which to set the park's spatiality by enhancing its ecological, aesthetic and cultural characteristics, and by accommodating its degree of indeterminacy.

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