STONESCAPE
STONESCAPE is a landscape of gravel, sand and grass in which eleven rough quarry stones stimulate the curiosity and imagination of all users articulating playful spaces that follow one another between extrusions and depressions. The installation is a narrative path engraved on an oneiric ground elevated from Piazza Boetti; a ground in which to play, to rest in the shade of the red prunus or to participate in events, talks and performances.
STONESCAPE fits into Zaha Hadid’s geometries, constructing itself by “difference”, that is, not as architecture in the “positive”, but as a ground design that rethinks the orography of the curvilinear staircase. In fact, the installation originates from the existing pathways that are reshaped through the design of a new landscape characterised by a varnished wooden parterre (raised 50 cm above Piazza Boetti) and an oneiric gravel ground (at the upper level of the wooden surface). The wooden parterre, a stage but also a seat, is oriented perpendicular to the point of view from the centre of the Piazza to Via Masaccio.
STONESCAPE is shaped through three operations: the excavation-incision, the modelling of the oneiric ground (in gravel) and the addition of natural elements (stones, trees and grasses). The oneiric ground thus becomes a precise planimetric figure, which, lowering slightly towards the Piazza, accommodates the grafting of the stage-seat with its two steps and three ramps that guarantee accessibility of the installation for all users. The gravel surface of the oneiric ground is modelled with five extrusions and three depressions. Two of these extrusions, conical in shape, contain trees while the tallest is a Fountain from which water leaches, allowing play and refreshment. The oneiric ground is completed with the additions of natural elements: 11 rough travertine quarry stones, fifteen red prunus and a few species of reddish grasses.
STONESCAPE is a place that does not impose playful actions, but conceives play as a continuous exploration stimulated by the natural elements that follow one another in the oneiric ground. The spontaneous discovery of nature and material is the essence of the installation. Three “play rooms” float in the gravel parterre and are different for walking surfaces (sand and grass) and play experience. The Hide and Seek is a place where you can disappear among the three “megalithic” stones, the Jump is a hollow in the oneiric ground from which three small rocks emerge, and finally the Footprint is a room of mystery in which paintings of cave hands appear drawn on a “megalithic” boulder. A final alienating element emerges from the oneiric ground: a stone in which a wooden pole is embedded, supporting an archaic Swing.
