Italy: Piuarch’s innovative urban gardening kit
Milan studio Piuarch moves from green roofs to a multipurpose module for city dwellers, offering planting, workstation and wellness space in one
Wallpaper
Aug 2021
Excerpt:
The team has been involved in a variety of projects around urban agriculture and sustainable food production. Examples include the vegetable garden on their own green roof, conceived as an ecosystem that fosters biodiversity, improves the food supply chain and guarantees quality products; Espaço, a 2018 installation in São Paulo, aimed at restoring neglected urban areas and empowering the local community, especially children, involving them in play-training and food gardening activities; and Synergy Gardens, a 2018 network of urban edible gardens on rooftops of Chicago Public Schools, in the so-called ‘food deserts’, low-income neighbourhoods with limited access to nutritious food. For Piuarch, this Re-Made project is part of a wider discourse about reimagining cities and envisioning a more sustainable future for all.
‘The kit aims at creating a domestic Eden to grow plants and bring nature back into people’s lives, as well as taking care of wellbeing, and fostering healthy and enriching activities in a small place. It’s a sort of cabinet for multiple uses,’ says Fresa. ‘While we all agree on the benefits of open-air activities and consuming healthy organic food, we also know that not everyone living in big cities is able to do that on a daily basis. It can be an issue of time, space, money or the recent pandemic.’
While the project was developed before Covid-19 hit, the Milan-based team’s recent experience of lockdown has given the concept – a product to improve small-space living – new meaning and importance. ‘It can become a powerful tool,’ points out Fresa.
