Landscapes that unite memory and future
On October 31st and November 1st in Sciacca (AG), AIAPP Sicilia is dedicating two days to Alessandro Tagliolini with a conference and photography exhibition on the relationship between art, landscape, and thermal identity. Terra Solida will be present to share technical and sustainable approaches to low-impact paving and roads, in line with the values of landscape protection and enhancement.
AIAPP – Italian Association of Landscape Architecture, Sicily Section, presents "Innovating the Landscape, Preserving the Future": two days of discussion and study to be held in Sciacca (Agrigento) on October 31st and November 1st, marking the 75th anniversary of AIAPP and in memory of Alessandro Tagliolini (1931–2000), sculptor, landscape architect, and garden historian. The event aims to revisit the fruitful encounter between Tagliolini and the Sicilian landscape, with particular attention to the Parco delle Terme and the surrounding urban context, now at the center of a renewed effort to revitalize the city's spa identity.
The program opens on Friday, October 31st, at 9:30 a.m. at the Teatro Popolare di Samonà, with registration for course credits. This will be followed by institutional greetings and presentations by leading national landscape authorities and professionals, including Fabio Termine (Mayor of Sciacca), Andrea Cassone (National President of AIAPP), and Antonella Bondì (President of AIAPP Sicily). The day, which will conclude at 18:30 p.m. after a visit to the Teatro Popolare di Samonà, will feature contributions from experts in urban planning, garden history, restoration, and planning, who will discuss the contemporary challenges of landscape design and Tagliolini's design and cultural legacy.
On November 1st, the initiative continues at the Sciacca Cultural Center, where at 10:00 a.m., a photography exhibition will be inaugurated, dedicated to the works and places that shaped the artist's dialogue with Sicily. During the day, the documentary "La natura della materia" (The Nature of Matter) will be screened, directed and edited by Juan F. Andrès, with a screenplay by Patrizia Tagliolini Hartman and produced by La Odisea Films – NIC Instituto del cine de Madrid SL. The two days will conclude with a visit to the Sciacca Thermal Park, a symbolic hub of the relationship between memory, landscape, and community.
Terra Solida shares AIAPP's values of protection, quality, and responsibility in transforming places. For this reason, it will be present at the event with Fabio Pace (Area Manager Promotec Green Ideas) and its Sicilian collaborators, to meet with professionals and stakeholders interested in learning more about the characteristics and performance of eco-friendly roads and pavements that can be created with Terra Solida technologies. The focus is on solutions that combine durability and reduced environmental impact: draining and permeable surfaces, low-pollutant consolidations, and installation techniques that optimize resources and maintenance over time, consistent with an approach that prioritizes continuity between context, landscape, and infrastructure.
"Innovating the Landscape, Preserving the Future" is a title that sums up the cultural horizon of the event: not opposing new and old, but integrating knowledge, technology, and sensitivity to create lasting landscapes. This is a perspective that Terra Solida embraces in the daily work of construction sites: listening to the local areas, measuring impacts, choosing materials and processes that are most compatible with the environment and the needs of use. The landscape is not a backdrop, but the primary interlocutor of every design decision; infrastructures are not foreign bodies, but structures that must interact with soil, water, vegetation, and communities.
As part of the AIAPP 75th anniversary celebrations, the Sciacca event represents a valuable opportunity to connect research, professional practice, and social responsibility. Terra Solida is delighted and honored to participate in an initiative that reaffirms the centrality of landscape in public life and the quality of spaces. In this corner of the Mediterranean, recognized worldwide for its beauty, the culture of design once again serves as a bridge between memory and future, between places and people, between vision and concreteness.
