MARTINI AWARD FOR LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 2004, THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE EVER LIVED IN

The temporary garden, winner of the MARTINI AWARD, created in the building destroyed by a fire within the monumental complex of Villa Marzotto in Trissino (VI) is proposed as a path of growth and knowledge, inspired by Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel The Secret Garden, in a contemporary revisitation, which unfolds in four rooms in sequence. The title of the project, The Strangest House Anyone Ever Lived in, is a quote from the novel.

THE FIRST ROOM is the starting point, where free nature has taken possession of the space, covering what remains of the past, in a confusion that recalls the original disorder.

THE SECOND ROOM represents a dark, orderly but claustrophobic space, which indicates the difficulties of everyday life: a regular forest of bamboo marks the walls with its drawn trunks, and in the center, forces to a labyrinthine passage.

THE THIRD ROOM constitutes a pause, a diaphragmatic dark space, suspended in time, of waiting and anticipation.

THE FOURTH ROOM is where the space suddenly opens onto a carpet of blooms. Suddenly it seems that the walls disappear and the horizon expands infinitely as if to symbolize the space of the soul, of possibilities, of the future: two large mirrors applied to the side walls hide the walls and recall the image of the flowered carpet endlessly…