Landworks Sardinia

It's been a few months since the abandoned mines of the Geo Mineral Park of Montevecchio in Sardinia, Italy, a UNESCO world heritage site, were the protagonist of the second edition of Landworks Sardinia, a collective action of land-architecture organized under the direction of Stefan Tischer and coordinated by Annacaterina Piras and Paola Serrittu.

This sifted desert mineral is finally consolidating or dissolving the works developed in the last ten days of May. More than sixty participants from four continents joined the workshop, alongside ten tutors and five project leaders.

Landworks Sardinia had the Department of Architecture, Design and Urbanism of the University of Sassari, the Presidency of the Council of the Region of Sardinia, the Goethe Institute and the UNESCO Chair for Landscape (CUPEUM) as scientific partners. Simultaneously, the local governments of the municipality of Guspini, mining company Arbus — which owns the former mining concessions — and many local associations worked together on the initiative.

For those who now want to see the results of this work, below are a series of notes written during the landworks process, perhaps the most effective guide to understanding the work and spirit that guides these constructions.

Ferdinand Ludwig (Baubotanik, Stuttgart), his tutors, Sergio Sanna and Paola Riviezzo, and his students carefully probed all of the material stored in the unused site. They took note of shapes, sizes, possible constructive uses of the semi-finished products. The only foreign elements in the site will be twenty specimens of Laurus nobilis in twenty-four vases. A few hours to understand the subject and then beginning to assume the project with twelve models, small-scale structural tests of its durability. And it is just practice, "Here this could work!" Together the group decides upon a hypothesis that will make them sweat it out. Ferdinand knows how to motivate the group. The field office is very useful for making operational decisions. The team starts the construction of a tower, built with beams and tracks decommissioned and stored on-site. The land could be foolhardy and enforces rules. An early alarm in the morning, meeting on site at 7:30, collective briefing, sharing of the goals of the day, division of labor, work shifts. Courage and strength. Ten people for moving at least a section of ten meters and 300 kg of railtracks. The first, the second, the third railtrack, until the sixteenth. The railtracks define the view and, the beams go up. And up. A scaffold is needed, to continue to rise. On the sides of the tower, four steps made of beams help to lift the tracks. There aren't technical means on site. They may not be useful in this exercise. The fatigue is in the muscles and joints of the young designers, and is definitely appreciated. A few days after the work is complete. The choice of the site, the direction suggested to the eye, the structural aesthetics and ethics of reuse and contamination of nature-artifice amaze the visitor for simplicity and cleanliness. No contraption to fasten the parts, only tectonics and force of gravity.

Philippe Poullaouec-Gonidec (CUPEUM, Montreal) does not compromise. The site is extreme, a streaked desert. The views offer terraces of refuses, residues of mining, spilled guts of the granite mountain, advancing towards the valley, the plain, the sea. Everything is still. Faraway, the movement of the wind turbines. The project has already been drawn in the mind of Poullaouec-Gonidec and does not allow alternatives to the idea of the sublime. The approach is top to bottom. The entity of the works exceeds the soil conditions. The ambition is cosmological, and universally untouchable. The scale of the gesture is a not a human movement. How to implement the cosmological gesture? Tutors Francesca Marinelli, Antonello Naseddu and Pier Francesco Lisci do not spare themselves. Meanwhile, with a lot of difficulty, a tonne and a half of limestrone arrives on site. The land is hard and huge. What kind of body is needed here? Straight lines are drawn with difficulty like mirages in the fumes of the heat. Brands, tracks, measures and mine try the path of land art. The site can be looked at from the road, far from the difficult conditions of the terrain. Lines of white limestone divide the field. It becomes a combat field. Wounds that hurt. Basic scarification on the acid substrate. Rarely the roar of bombers has been so deafening. Even their practice for war. What kind of body is needed?

With Roberto Zancan (Milan) and all his group, led by Paolo Tringali and Nadia D'Agnone, they all love each other! A collective ritual of continous relations. They decide to be one body. They train practicing Body Pressure with Bruce Nauman as an imaginary coach, and collectively decide not to get lost. They play the game, the battlefield becomes playground. The first game is a refrain that is not lost.

The group invents a world of places and names [A-TOPIC GRID, HUMAN PARKING, LENS (S) CAPE, BINOCULAR (OR INFINITE), MICRO (i) PHONE (OR AMPLIFIER), CANNON, U-TOPIC GRID, TEMPLE, HALO'S DEER ]. Some large, some small. From their games they make a map, assembled on-site with a performing rhythm, giving new coordinates to the location. Three actions become the foundations of the project: re-use, connect, clean. Simple and primitive movements, a coordinated effort exactly where and when you need it; here is their method, the Montevecchio Metod, a new foundation, a new system of relations between bodies through semi-finished items. All these are devices. There is a video of the process. We have seen and walked through the east yard of the Montevecchio mines many times, but the group's Metod offers a completely new lens through which to look at the area, anticipates a masterplan, reveals a park.

The Landworks Landscape Laboratory (L3) is the foundation device for a field of engagement coordinated by Craig Verzone (VWA, Rougemont, Switzerland) and tutors Carmela Coviello, Matteo Zurru and Paola Serrittu. The shape of the investigation evolves through a series of operations aimed not at defining the final physical form of the intervention itself, but at the pursuit of answers to the group's basic questions. Why intervene? Why here? And how? The declaration of this point of origin incites a relentless form of questioning and examination whose research experiments eventually leave their traces on the field.

Data is collected and measured; time, materiality, humidity, temperature, wind. Learning is transcribed and recorded. Extract, discard, intervene, operate. Observe, draw, assimilate, understand. Students are enthusiastic, restlessly learning about place and making. In disagreement regarding a mode of collective intervention, they pause, debate, vote, and begin working again. Silvestro Papinuto, a former miner and expert plant forager, and Filippo Mereu, a specialist on urban agriculture, bring critical insight and physical assistance to the unit.

The site is undeniably contaminated. L3 research has no pre-determined product, only an evolving process. Resonating from the work, nonetheless, is an abacus-like, ground-based grid demonstrating three combinations of soils types from the L3 field of engagement, two of which are most prevalent and assumed to be polluted and one of which is a fertile substrate formed through natural decomposition. L3 conclusions include more questions than answers. Which modes of remediation will effectively begin to counter the environmental damage incurred? Where should they be deployed? Who will take responsibility for the future course-of-action?

Meanwhile, the L3 on-site research and its expanse of aggregates is already an accessible, virtual public space and available for commentary.

Opposite is the logic of work coordinated by Chris Phongphit (SoA D, Bangkok) with the support of Sara Angelini and Lodovico Bruckmann: two open rooms, enclaves, inspiring objects, micro shapes in silence. With sealed lips and an agave flower as a trophy, the students, as caryatids, guide us towards the interior. The general silence focuses on the carefully finished detail.

Along the valley of the Rio Piscinas the choice of site was extremely accurate. The exposure, the light, the weather are perfect. It's so comfortable in here. Two mono places, two secret gardens. Vegetable balls rise from the first room, and remain suspended in the second. Innocent, like soap bubbles. It is possible to experience the scents and the voices of the mountain, and the decades of mining, its places and people are forgotten. You enjoy the privilege of being here now. It feels better inside than out. I would like to have this place as my office. Fausta Occhipinti