Andrea Cassone's Vision: AIAPP and the Future of the Italian Landscape
Architect, educator, and landscape visionary, Andrea Cassone is today one of the most authoritative voices in the field of sustainable design and in the protection of natural and cultural heritage. As President of AIAPP, he guides us through the founding values of the association, its initiatives, and the prospects for the new generations of landscape architects, in a dialogue that unites tradition, innovation, and environmental responsibility.
Context: The Italian Association of Landscape Architecture (AIAPP)
Founded in 1950 in Rome, AIAPP is the Italian Association of Landscape Architecture, and represents a point of reference for all those who dedicate themselves to the design and protection of the landscape in Italy. A founding member of IFLA (International Federation of Landscape Architects), AIAPP was born with the aim of enhancing the profession of landscape architect, promoting its knowledge and strategic role in urban, cultural and environmental fields.
The association operates with a multidisciplinary approach, involving experts from various sectors to address the complex challenges of modern landscape design. Its main values include the protection of historical and environmental heritage, education for sustainability and the promotion of innovative solutions that respect ecological balance. AIAPP believes that landscape is not just an aesthetic element, but a collective right and an essential component of the quality of life, as established by the European Landscape Convention (2001).
Through events, training projects and awareness-raising initiatives, AIAPP is committed to conveying the importance of dialogue between tradition and innovation. Its role is crucial for the future of the Italian territory, both in terms of protecting cultural heritage and for the creation of livable and inclusive spaces. For young professionals, AIAPP represents not only an opportunity for growth and discussion, but also an opportunity to contribute to a mission of great social and environmental impact.
The interview.
Arch. Cassone, you are the National President of AIAPP. What are the values that your association promotes in Italy and with which initiatives? Why should a young landscaper join AIAPP, with what prospects?
The Italian Association of Landscape Architecture – AIAPP it is a landscape house, if not “the” landscape house, in Italy.
What do I mean by calling it that?
I mean that it is the natural reference for all those who deal with landscape, for work, for study and research, for simple personal interest. It is a house that is now almost seventy-five years old; AIAPP was in fact founded in 1950 in Rome, at the Casina dell'Orologio in Villa Borghese.
The values that the association promotes are therefore the values of a partnership that promotes a job, a profession – the landscape architect, the landscape designer – his knowledge, his training and his presence both within the country to which he directly refers – Italy – and, more generally, in the supranational systems to which it belongs.
AIAPP has in fact been a member of since its inception IFLA, the International Federation of Landscape Architects, which he helped to establish, two years before AIAPP, in Cambridge (UK) in 1948, thanks to two of its founding members, Elena Luzzatto and Pietro Porcinai.
The values of a professional and work association are first of all the custody and faithful transmission of the received heritage - knowledge and practice of landscape architecture - and then its presentation and development for the general interest of the community to which it belongs, given the importance that the landscape has by definition (Florence Convention 2001) in the life of all those who are part of it and in the general balance of the environment that surrounds us.
There is also – especially in Italy – a special duty/value: the intelligent protection of the immense heritage received – historical, artistic, environmental etc. – expression of a tradition that has been, as a whole, fundamentally landscape/landscapes and that still today is an essential reference for anyone who deals, in the world, with the disciplines of landscape architecture and the corresponding Landscape architecture.
For all the reasons that can be deduced from the presentation of the association - protection of the values of a job, of a profession, loyalty to a discipline and care for its transmission, diffusion of knowledge and affirmation of a profession that is also and above all modern, duty to protect and enhance the legacy received - today I believe AIAPP can best represent a reference, a home.
For young professionals, of course, it is also an opportunity for comparison and professional growth.
It is also important to underline that, by its very nature, the landscape requires the propensity for the capacity for inter- and multi-disciplinary dialogue and coordination. Today, this propensity, this quality certainly constitutes an added value, both professional and civil, available to the new generations, for the development and affirmation of an increasingly responsible culture of collective involvement in the preservation and enrichment of the landscape tradition.
If you had to choose three cornerstones that best identify your way of understanding landscape design, which would you choose and why?
Three key words and guides of my vision of landscape-conscious projects are: comprehension, care, direction.
Reading comprehension
Understanding is the knowledge that comes from having experienced principles and theory. Understanding is needed to be able to consciously approach the landscape, because the landscape has a concrete dimension, so rich and kaleidoscopic, almost elusive at times, that it can easily lead to design choices based on general, contradictory and simplistic assumptions.
Understanding requires attention, time and patience, but it almost always translates into a safe and “true” choice; understanding is ultimately authentic innovation since the latter, in landscape terms, should be seen first and foremost as a possibility inherent in the landscape itself. To identify it, the practice of understanding is therefore indispensable.
Care Instructions
Care is continuous attention to integration, to completeness; it is mainly achieved through understanding, repair, correction. The final goal of care is permanent healing, a state of dynamic equilibrium that, with reference to ecology, guarantees the maximum degree of well-being compatible with the conditions of an environmental system.
When setting out to design, therefore, one should always pay attention to the state of affairs from which one starts – whether it is a garden, a park, a part of the city or more complex landscapes – seeing it in its quality as a living system, a quality that must be “listened to”, understood and, when necessary, often unfortunately, restored.
In the absence of authentic care, every project unfortunately runs the risk of resembling an unnecessary plastic surgery procedure (interventions that certainly should not be excluded, but should be carefully evaluated based on many different considerations).
Regia
Landscape represents a level of reading, interpretation and transformation of the environment naturally superior to territorial sciences, environmental planning, urban planning, architecture, garden art etc.
The responsibility of the landscape architect in his commitment is important: it has to do with the perception by the communities and individuals who are part of their own space and time, of the scene, of the places of life.
It is a responsibility that requires directorial virtue, a virtue that consists in exercising the burden of having the last word, but only after having listened to everyone and having conducted the listening in a climate of belonging to a vision, to a minimum objective: the creation of conditions of well-being for all.
Doctors, biologists, geologists, naturalists, agronomists and foresters, legal experts, economists, architects, etc. should and must always be able to sit around a landscape designer's table.
I could dwell at length on the themes linked to the three guiding words that I have presented, but I prefer to stop also because it is right that each person can explore them in their own way: they are three little stones left, in the manner of Tom Thumb, they are a trace or, to enter a field very close to the landscape, in its telluric consistency, they are stock cubes that each person can then enrich and develop in their own way.
Among your activities there is school teaching. What are the aspects related to the talent of the individual that should be protected by the school system and with what tools?
The talent of the individual… that’s a perfect question, thank you. I firmly believe in the qualities of the individual, in the peculiarities of individuals. The individual, however, can grow and manifest himself only in his full self-knowledge and the self-knowledge of the individual can only be realized in comparison with the group, the community, the world, because they are his natural and immediate reflection.
Therefore, for me, teaching is theoretical for everyone and then practical for each one, in a laboratory, team atmosphere.
In particular, when teaching Habitat and Environment Engineering (IHA – Engineering represents all technical professions in the title), it is necessary that part of the course experience takes place in that climate of direction that I mentioned when talking about my key words in landscape design.
Concretely: the students sitting around the same large table learn, by planning, teamwork, addressing each other formally and progressively building their contribution to everyone's commitment, in terms of ideas and practice. At the end of the course, each person can be assigned their own way of directing, temporary and limited, but important.
It is right that each student can also try his hand at the solitary role par excellence of the group leader, the director. Training in “being”, in individual quality, is a priority; technical tools and more will follow and can be used to the best once the understanding of one’s own nature, one’s own possibilities and the vision of the infinitely creative developments that each of us has within ourselves, dormant, have been acquired.
The effects of climate change on soil are increasingly determining in people's lives in relation to the landscape that hosts them. With which ideas and technologies can we pursue the goal of hydrological balance?
Environmental changes – of which climate is particularly relevant today – are the natural consequence of a planet that has seen its population more than double in the space of two generations.
It is difficult to make predictions of either an optimistic or pessimistic nature – naturally inclined to optimism, the catastrophism of many seems to me to be an integral part of the problem and sometimes even a convenient alibi – however we are certainly called already now to pay attention and care to some delicate “basic” conditions for the quality of life and the ecosystems in which life is organized and articulated.
Among the basic conditions there is certainly the quality of water and its cycle. Rainfall and soil, in their relationship, are a topic of capital importance.
It is necessary to promote the drainage and absorption of rainwater to the greatest possible degree (compatibility) with the environment in which one operates. This must be done with ever greater care and articulation of the type of intervention, both for what concerns all infrastructural constructions (from simple paths such as trails, to more complex road forms of space use, etc.), and for what concerns agricultural spaces and natural spaces in the broad sense.
There can be many technologies, from the ever-improving contribution of nurseries and crops to the use of truly bio-sustainable techniques (i.e. attentive to the effects on the conditions of all living things and not only linked to a technical-economic paradigm related only to the energy and life cycle of materials, elements and techniques).
Returning to the keywords, it is necessary to find solutions that are linked to comprehension, care e direction.
First of all, therefore, it will be necessary to always use the resources that Mother Nature provides us – for example:
- For plants, the species that best guarantee resistance and endurance to variations in water supply;
- For infrastructure, lands that can facilitate drainage, even in urban environments;
- For homes, rainwater collection systems and the adoption of regulations that prescribe the use of the so-called third network (grey water) etc.
In short, much can be done with what we already have, using it intelligently on the strength of a true understanding of materials, elements and techniques and thus getting used to caring for, repairing and restoring, in a climate of direction, the current state with a view to collective well-being.
What are the technological aspects related to the evolution of materials that contribute most to the sustainable development of the landscape in design and why?
In connection with what was said in the answer to the previous questions, I would highlight some needs.
I would like to point out that I come from a school that had a lot to do, even directly, with baubiologie, bioarchitecture etc.; I am therefore extremely sensitive to the theme of materials, elements and techniques, under the aspect of their natural root, transformations, life cycle and overall energy consumption (without making it a super parameter, it is certainly still a fact of the utmost importance today).
I want to say, in essence, that without falling into the Manichaeism of mannerism (… “synthetic” products are bad etc. … false! There is nothing bad in itself, in this world; everything depends on the transformation, the context and the quantity etc. to which a material has been subjected, meaning by material what is taken from nature, with the minimum possible artifice), it is however evident that today it is increasingly necessary:
- When choosing materials and elements, always focus on those available locally or in the vicinity of the project site (except in the event of obvious needs for a different choice due to insufficient functional qualities, etc.);
- Choose materials, elements and techniques for direct use and not mediated by complex processing/transformation operations: earth, clay, directly available aggregates, limestone, stone, wood etc. should be preferred. If this can be rather complicated in architecture today (consolidated building cycle, and yet something is moving also in construction), it should be natural in the landscape;
- Always confront the history of a place (comprehension), especially in terms of perceptual values and sensoriality (the landscape is defined in terms of perception by the European Convention, it is extremely important to always take this into account);
- Choose materials and elements that can always be subject to improvement interventions: that is, materials that can be integrated, modified or improved if damaged or for other reasons without this having to mean the replacement or demolition of the technique implemented. This is the secret of secrets (and also a legacy of the Latin tradition): demolishing due to age, malfunction or excessively high maintenance costs is always a defeat. The best materials, elements and techniques are those that, thanks to care (a word that always comes back) will be able to last a long time.
