• Auditorium, San Micheletto Complex, Lucca
To take into the bush. The project for the contemporary city.
Masterclass by Annalisa Metta
In collaboration with the Order of Architects of Lucca
“To take into the bush”, in a literal sense, means to flee and hide in the bush, the favorite place of outlaws, illegal immigrants, fugitives and fugitives, the refuge of those who live in hiding to avoid punishment or imprisonment, or those who by choice practice alternative patterns of life to the established order. It is an elsewhere, eschewing the laws that govern civilization.
The French equivalent, marronnage, is used to refer to domesticated animals who have gained a wild life or to humans deported into slavery who have managed to escape by sheltering in commonly inaccessible and inhospitable places; in both cases, the spots-selve to which they head are not their own places of origin, so marronnage is an experience of profound bewilderment, as it is an act of evasion involving an encounter with an unfamiliar land with which to establish a new coexistence pact, political and environmental, ethical and physiological, involving the excitement of freedom and the fear of vulnerability and uncertainty.
The encounter with an unfamiliar habitat produces inventive adaptations that trigger unprecedented cultural and biological forms, prompts the production of hybrids, and generates innovation through creolization. In this sense, wilderness has an enormous projective charge, far from the rhetoric of regretting an untouched and primal nature: it implies an unheard-of future and unleashes all the perturbing potential of the wilderness, which fascinates and frightens at the same time.
Annalisa Metta
Annalisa Metta is professor of landscape architecture at the University of Roma Tre. PhD in Architecture of Parks, Gardens and Spatial Planning, in 2016-2017 she won the Italian Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, to which she has been a consultant ever since.
He works on contemporary architecture of open spaces through theoretical-critical insights and applied research. His recent projects include the park on the Lungotevere Flaminio in Rome (in progress), the Every 9 Days installation for the Regeneration exhibition (American Academy in Rome, 2022), and the runner-up project in the international design competition for the Parco del Ponte (Genoa, 2019). In 2007, she was among the founding partners of Osa, with which, in 2012, she signed the curation and installation of Bosco Italia, Italian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Co-curator of the volumes Trees! 30 fragments of Italian history (Marsilio Arte, 2022), Coltiviamo il nostro giardino (DeriveApprodi, 2019), La città selvatica. Contemporary Urban Landscapes (Libria, 2020), in 2022 he published for DeriveApprodi Il paesaggio è un mostro. Wild cities and hybrid natures. Among other monographs: Anna and Lawrence Halprin. Landscapes and Choreographies of the Everyday (2008), Toward the South. When Rome Has Gone to Tunis (2018), both for Libria, and Paesaggi d’autore. The Twentieth Century in 120 Projects (Alinea, 2008). In 2022 he curates and hosts the podcast Oasis! Cities, natures and other mirages for the Mantua Literature Festival. Her essays and articles appear in specialized magazines, including Area, Rassegna, Territorio, Topos. In 2023 she is curator of the section La natura è di casa /Nature at Home, as part of the exhibition Home Sweet Home at the Milan Triennale.
