RivaViva is also a partner in Claudia Zanfi’s Green Island 2018, the first project to bring design to the streets of the Isola District, which has always developed actions of dissemination and cultural promotion in the field of environmental protection, eco-design and creative education on the theme of green and sustainability.
A path of eco-design, the one proposed this year by the 18th edition of Green Island, during Milan Design Week (April 17/22, 2018). A project that promises to light up with scents and colors the urban area between Garibaldi Station and the Isola District. Various stages will branch off in the streets of the neighborhood, transformed into a circuit of ‘flower windows’ marked by “vegetable signs” drawn on the sidewalk. Main stage and heart of the event will be the RIVA VIVA eco-furniture showroom in Via Porro Lambertenghi.
A novel installation will be created here, a real natural landscape divided into three different environments: the room of flowers (botanical trail), the room of woods ( sensory pathway) and the nature room (visual pathway).
The first room, dedicated to FLORA, the undisputed protagonist of this new edition, shows the beautiful photographic works of Cinzia Castagna, an artist from Piacenza with a passion for gardens and landscape, who creates real “flower portraits” capable of capturing the magical moment of flowering through images of three-dimensional and living material density, thanks to a skillful play of light and shadow. Flowers are nature’s most beautiful gift, the apex of a plant’s productive life that sometimes-as in the case of the cactus-after the first sprout, dies. They are natural sculptures with their own internal and external architecture (just think of pistil and petals) so amazing that they do not seem real. They are abstract “figures and silhouettes” deprived of the space-time dimension that reveal themselves to our eyes in their geometric shapes, following plant textures and patterns. Unquestionably objective works, but at the same time poetic. Any plant element (from the stem in the fields, to the spontaneous flora along streams, to the most complicated flower) is born as a design object.
The next wood room is also a space to be discovered because there are so many types of wood and so are their colors and scents. By caressing its surfaces and rings we will understand a lot about the history of a tree and will be able to observe pieces of shrubs from distant countries, smooth or wrinkled, smooth or gnarled. An experienced artist/woodworker will tell us the story of this “living material” and present it to us piece by piece, highlighting its characteristics.
Finally, the nature room, built to visually and emotionally engage those who enter, transporting them to another dimension. Made of whispering leaves, breathing trees and waterfalls roaring with thunder. The sights and sounds will take the visitor on a journey inside forests and grasslands, dripping caves or flowering meadows. In an instant, the noise and gray monochrome of the city will be behind us and we will find ourselves immersed in a carnival of color.