129 PIETRO PORCINAI IN THE GARDEN
Oasi Zegna in Trivero hosts a retrospective of the renowned twentieth-century Italian landscape architect who revolutionized the spaces where man and nature meet
«Pietro Porcinai was the greatest», says Paolo Pejrone. He created a profession that had not been invented until the twentieth century, that of the modern gardener. «That’s not all; he knew how to design as well as growing things, a doer as well as a thinker. First he dreamt up a concept for the garden and then he created it». Porcinai has left us more than a thousand schemes around the world, of varying scale and type. The furthest away is in Costa Rica; the most famous is the external landscaping for the Centre Georges Pompidou (with Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers) and the most beautiful is the Villa Recchi swimming pool in Portofino. «A master’s touch» continues Pejrone, the Architect who was commissioned by the Zegna Foundation, along with other experts, to contribute to the exhibition (and the book)
Pietro Porcinai a Trivero. Giardini e paesaggio tra pubblico e privato (Porcinai at Trivero. Gardens and landscape, both public and private),
open until 10 July at Oasi Zegna near Biella. The landscape architect was from Florence, but this is where he worked for twenty years ‒ starting in the 50s ‒ to redesign large tracts of land, planning them for the first time as a ‘process’, ever-changing places that can be adapted and rearranged. «It is nature revealed, using new techniques», says Professor Luigi Latini, the exhibition’s curator. Despite being man-made, Porcinai’s work had an unexpectedly natural appearance, as if it had always been there and no-one had ever laid hands on it. There is a rigorous logic behind it though, with nothing superfluous. Porcinai was a minimalist in life as well, taciturn and reserved, with a precision that was more Germanic than Italian; he spent hours carrying out inspections and changing planting layouts on site. To make a gardener, he argued, knowledge of phytosociology, «how plants relate to each other» was essential in addition to botany «because plants have likes and dislikes too and true beauty is only achieved if they are in tune with each other». This is why his preference was not for the perfect tree, but one that was out of the ordinary, distorted or twisted perhaps. Not content with designing and creating, he offered gardening advice, made recommendations for mowers and studied stage and furniture design. A typical case in point is the Casa Zegna winter garden. In the glass box (now an exhibition centre), where exotic vegetation colonised the walls and overran the floors, the selection of furniture - some designed by Porcinai himself ‒ and its arrangement in juxtaposition with the plants ‒ was almost contemporary in style. «With him», claims Latini «the role of the greenhouse is no longer a place for sheltering and displaying plants; it becomes a ‘drawing room’, an inhabited area where living alongside the plants offers a more welcoming approach to social relationships». Porcinai was a pioneer in hospitality (as well).