It is considered the greatest Italian landscape painter of the 20th century. Pietro Porcinai has a long career in the garden designwhich has seen the realisation of landscaping of enormous value, in urban, industrial and tourism contexts, for more than 1100 projects realised in Italy and worldwide.
Pietro Porcinai: a family with a 'green' heart
Florentine by birth, Porcinai (see his website, by clicking here) learns the passion and love for the nature partly from the context in which he grew up, the Florentine hills, but mainly thanks to his father Martino, who was working as a head gardener in those years.
The family environment in which Porcinai lives is highly stimulating, enriched and populated by artists, English-speaking intellectuals, who soon accompany Porcinai in his discovery of the art of garden designat a time in history, that of the early 20th century, when the very conception of the idea of garden Italianwith a reaffirmation, after the fashion of the English park, of the Renaissance and Baroque garden.
Training
Graduated as an agricultural expert, Porcinai worked in Belgium and Germany until 1929, before returning to Florence,
where he works with the Pistoia nurseryman Martino Bianchi.
He attended the liceo artistico in Florence, graduated in 1935 and then enrolled a few years later at the Regio Istituto Superiore di Architecturebut left the university in '45, believing that the institution was unable to fulfil its social role and to train and educate in beauty, creativity and art, which have as their primary source of inspiration precisely the nature.
Experience abroad
Back abroad, Porcinai came into contact with the most important European garden architects. Among them were Fritz Enchke, Karl Förster, Gustav Lüttge, Russel Page, Geoffrey Jellicoe, René Pechère, Gerda Gollwitzer.
Here he has the opportunity to confront other working methods and innovative solutions.
In 1937 he began his collaboration with the architecture magazine Domus and the following year, at only 28 years of age,
founded a studio in Florence with Nello Baroni and Maurizio Tempestini.
Soon, this reality will become an important landmark in the city's cultural life and will make its talent known in the field of garden design.
In 1940 he founded with Ugo Bagni and Bruno Marchesi the The Garden Societyspecialising in the realisation and maintenance of parks and gardens and in 1941, with Giuseppe Zecchi and Ugo Mechetti, the Arno company for the manufacture of artistic ceramics.
In 1948, at Jesus College, Cambridge, he was among the founding members of theIFLA - International Federation Landscape Architecture together with an international group of landscape architects, with the aim of disseminating a landscape culture.
The projects of the greatest Italian landscape architect of the 20th century
Among his most important projects
- the design for the Hansaviertel Park in Berlin (1956);
- the consultancy for Abu Simbel (1963);
- the design for the exterior of the Pompidou Centre (1973);
- the Saudi Arabian city parks project (1975-76);
- the Abidjan competition (1979)
- the competition for La Villette Park (1982).
Important collaborations
Porcinai's most significant collaborations include those with:
- Ludovico Belgioioso
- Ernesto Nathan Rogers
- Vittoriano Viganò
- Marco Zanuso
- Pietro Consagra
- Riccardo Morandi
- Oscar Niemeyer
- Renzo Piano
- Richard Rogers
- Carlo Scarpa
- Franco Albini
- Franca Helg
THE AIAP
In 1950, together with other pioneers, he succeeded in establishing theAIAP, Italian Association of Garden and Landscape Architects. He was first its secretary and then its honorary president and in the 1960s decided to organise an educational centre, a place where ideas, experiences and opinions could be exchanged.
Commitment to the profession of landscape architect took him around the world to participate in various international fora in the field and in 1982, in Florence, he drafted the Italian Map of Historic Gardens.
Awards
Porcinai has won several awards, which today place him in the garden design panorama as one of greatest Italian landscape painters of the last century. These include:
- IN-Arch Prize 1960
- Award of Merit from the School of Environmental Design at the University of Georgia
- Friedrich Ludwigh von Schkel ring conferred on him by the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts (the first Italian to receive the prestigious award)
An essay not to be missed
La landscape philosophy by Pietro Porcinai is contained in an important essay, written in collaboration with philosopher and Franciscan Tertiary Attilio Mordini: Gardens of the West and East.
Cover image: torinofree.co.uk
Discover the master in gerden design by Italian Design Institute.
