Grow Together Grow Green from Topotek 1

The motto of this year’s Landscape Festival in Bergamo and Brescia was “Grow Together – Growing Together”. In addition to numerous players from landscape architecture, culture and art, Topotek 1 also made a contribution this year. “Grow Together Grow Green” is an installation that aims to make the city greener through collective action.

Bergamo in northern Italy is best known for its excellent cuisine and historic old town. The Cittá Alta – the upper town – rises majestically on a rock in the center. Le Corbusier said of the Piazza Vecchia and the old town ensemble that anyone who changed a single stone would be committing a crime. The Landscape Festival has been taking place in this special setting since 2011. The aim of the festival is to bring the topic of landscape and the treatment of landscape to the general public. Originally initiated by the non-profit association Arketipos, it has developed into a major international event over the years.

The Landscape Festival took place from September 7 to 23, 2023. Bergamo and Brescia also hold the title of Italian Capital of Culture this year. A circumstance that may have helped the Landscape Festival to attract even more attention. Which, given the relevance of the topics covered by the festival, is a great benefit for society at large. Under the motto “Grow Together – Growing Together”, the event looked for approaches to growing together. The landscape can not only build a bridge between the past and the future, but also act as a place that brings people, architecture and nature into harmony. As part of the Landscape Festival, actors from various disciplines looked for ways in which spaces can become places to live. And furthermore, how places in particular can be preserved, cared for and cultivated in order to grow together as individuals and communities.

Topotek 1 was one of the participants in the 2023 festival. The architecture and landscape architecture firm took the motto “Grow Together” one step further and added “Grow Green” to it. A highly relevant topic in times of climate crisis. After all, a rethink is needed to counter rising temperatures – especially in cities. According to a study from 2023, peak temperatures during heatwaves could be reduced by up to half a degree Celsius if cities increased their tree population by 30 percent. What may seem like a small undertaking in individual cases could have a major impact if implemented across the board. However, this requires the involvement of the community. “Grow together – grow green” calls for precisely this collective, environmentally conscious action.

Topotek 1 designed an installation that encourages people to work together to improve the urban climate. They focused on an intervention that promotes a sense of community and togetherness that has been partially lost in the last few years of the pandemic. To this end, they designed a spatial experience on three levels: Deconstruction, Activation and Reforestation. The installation functions as a modular structure made of scaffolding, which is planted with seedlings of species typical to the region.

The scaffolding was chosen as a lightweight and reusable system. Not only can the installation be easily assembled and dismantled, but the structure also has an almost unlimited life cycle and can be reused in different locations. This was the case at the Fuorisalone in Milan, for example, where Topotek 1 had already exhibited a prototype of the installation. The scaffolding is accessible and invited visitors both in Milan and now in Bergamo to wander around the various levels. At the same time, the site was used for a colorful program. One of the highlights was the screening of “Homo Urbanus”, a series of 10 films by artists and filmmakers Beka & Lemoine. The well-attended event showed how the installation can function as a stage for communal gatherings. The changeability is revealed in the planting, as it were. As the seedlings burst into growth, the perception of the place changed over time.

However, Topotek 1 did not just create a temporary experience during the festival. The installation was intended to grow beyond its own boundaries. Visitors were able to register and then take seedlings with them to plant throughout the city. Topotek 1 used the registration process to appeal to visitors’ sense of responsibility. As part of this, participants were asked to take good care of the seedlings from afar and to document the process via Instagram and the event website. The young plants’ journey from collection at the event to final planting in their own garden or elsewhere in the city thus became publicly traceable. Through the invitation to take the seedlings home and the replicability of the intervention, Topotek 1 hopes to create a permanent performance and not just a temporary installation.

“As both a living artistic space and a social tool, the project rethinks the way we interact with each other and influence our environment, emphasizing the potential of a collaborative process that depends on the actions of the individual: the possibility of growing and becoming green together,” is how Topotek 1 describe their project. This is exactly in line with the festival’s motto. And manifest the importance of the collective on a societal level for the change towards a more sustainable world. After all, the intervention “Grow together – grow green” could only succeed through broad and attentive social participation. It is important to take this message away from the festival for the multiple challenges and crises of the real world.

In September 2022, the “Maestri del Paesaggio” also invited visitors to the old town of Bergamo. Find out who and which project took over the temporary design of the impressive “Piazza Vecchia” here.