Cesare Leonardi, who obtained a degree in architecture from Florence University in 1970 and Franca Stagi, who obtained his from the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1962, co-ran a studio devoted to industrial design, architecture and the planning of green spaces between 1963 and 1983. In particular, during the seventies they focussed on designing parks and shared spaces paying special attention to the trees.
Their development and works are currently on display at the Archivio Architetto Cesare Leonardi, an association run by Giulio Orsini and founded in 2010 by students and collaborators for the purpose of conserving, disseminating and expanding on Leonardi’s studies and projects.
Green spaces in the development of cities
Leonardi and Stagi maintain the need to link the city to the territory; balancing built-up spaces and non-built-up spaces where trees, grass, silence and sun fill in for the concrete, walls, dust and shade generated by the city. It is an approach to regulate metropolitan growth in which green areas deserve to be allocated sufficiently-large spaces to play their part and, as a result, improve the living conditions in the city. This is a fundamental approach we have shared since 2004 in Belloch Forestal, our garden centre that specialises in urban woodland, where we offer tailored solutions for urban spaces, with the goal of providing socio-environmental services and the capacity to adapt to the environment, minimising risk.
“Bringing trees into a city means bringing all this into the lives of each of us: feeling the passage of time and the seasons through the trees; seeing not only how the colours of the city pale in the sun and its walls are consumed but also colours that renew themselves and constantly transform, and organisms consumed but at the same time nourished and developed by time”. (Franca Stagi)
So, for both architects, the designing of green urban areas requires the incorporation of the needs and inherent evolution of the trees, processes that involve different rates and types of growth that last last years or decades. In Stagi’s words: “The dimensioning, shape and orientation of green spaces must come from the life of the trees themselves to make way for architecture on the move that transforms and grows over time”.
At Belloch Forestal, we are experts in time and urban nature. We consider the life cycle of trees in cities, from preparation to planting. We explore sustainable ecosystem methods to reinforce them against plagues without using chemicals, and we grow them in Airpots to increase the success of their implantation. We consider the natural growth time and prepare our trees for the hostile urban environment, so they can grow and survive.
Vegetation architecture
Tree architecture illustrates more than two hundred tree species on a single scale, providing additional geographical, historical and etymological data.
The drawings accurately encapsulate the structure of each species in its mature state, with or without leaves. They are a graphical representation of the component elements and the way they intertwine. With painstaking detail from the trunk through to the branches and ending with the leaves and crown, suggesting a complete view: trees as architectural elements.
The study of shade brings a new, rational perception of the structure and design of green spaces. In relating the sun and shade, they develop examples of direction, orientation, development, shape and grouping that provide information for the proposal of cool summer refuges, meadows, resting areas and peaceful corners.
The study of colours represents and synthesises the continuous transformation of the plant world. The seasons, climate and atmosphere transform the appearance of plants, their flowers and their fruit and the shape and colour of their leaves. A vivid, changing pallet of natural colours.
The book provides an excellent opportunity to get inside the uniqueness of nature and learn more about plants, their infinite designs, origins and properties. Knowing and learning about each of them and their characteristics in order to adequately incorporate them into the habitats and provide them with optimum conditions. A true homage to their extraordinary capacity for survival and regeneration over thousands of years and their contribution to life providing oxygen for other organisms.
“In these small non-built up grassland areas of the city, in these small strips of land, in these leftover meadows we can discover other sounds, distinguish other smells and perfumes, observe new shapes, measure the passage of time differently, feel the changes in light”. (Franca Stagi)
