In the underbrush of Ippolito Pizzetti: natural genius
public lecture
Pierfrancesco Stella speaks with Mariapia Cunico, introduces Luigi Latini
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Writing with greenery, designing gardens with his light and discrete manner, was like preparing historical memories with invisible ink: it is there but you cannot see it.
Pizzetti’s tracks need to be found, catalogued and possibly interpreted, from the delicate signs that he left, often through the popularising mechanisms, as he did with the series that he created and established, on the topic of nature; or through the mechanisms of his projects, not only connected to the creation of gardens, but also in the approach that he taught his students: an approach towards life that embraces as much of the beauty that surrounds us as possible, with sensitivity and knowledge.
Investigating Pizzetti ‘s life-work was a unique occasion to understand the complex profession of the landscape designer, and how he developed it with rooted passion and cultured attention.
The note that distinguishes Pizzetti from other more technical colleagues in the landscape world is his constant attention to expressions: equally towards the imperceptibly concrete ones, as the spiritually ineffable ones. The complex and shared cultural project experienced by the shrewdest Italian intellectual friends reverberates in the underbush of Pizzetti: ancient divinities dance and plants, that the lazy eye perceives as mere “weeds”, grow in the shadow that the moon projects onto the trees. This refuse provides space for the possibility of the future and the humus that nourishes all imagination.
Mariapia Cunico, landscape architect, after many years of teaching the Art of Gardens and Landscape Architecture at the Iuav University of Venice, is now one of the scientific heads of the Masters in landscape garden at said University. She is the author of numerous essays, articles and books mainly on the gardens and landscape of the Veneto.
Luigi Latini, landscape architect, teaches landscape architecture at the Iuav University of Venice. He has been collaborating with Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche since 1998 and has headed the Scientific committee since 2013. Author of many studies and publications, he is a founding member and current president of the Pietro Porcinai Association.
Pierfrancesco Stella, architect based in Maniago (Pordenone), studied at the Iuav University of Venice and at the Technical University of Dresda he obtained his degree with a research thesis paper on the Tagliamento river and the delicate relationships between man and river. He was at the Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche with a scholarship from December 2015 to May 2016, conducting research on the life-work of Ippolito Pizzetti.