About This Project
329. Sunset-Dawn
1978, bronze, h. 29 x 42 x 34.5 cm
Photo Paolo Monti
Copy at the headquarters of Credito Valtellinese in Sondrio
If I could, I would send all vehicles below ground level, to make them run fast along underground streets. In this way I would give the streets back to man alone. I would change the streets into lawns, the avenues into long walking paths, the squares into woods. I would change the entire street network into thousands of green paths. I would make sure people went up and down along an uninterrupted set of garden platforms with lots of trees. In other words, I would make sure they went back to walking in pleasant surroundings. Alternatively, I would build all this at roof level, leaving the streets the way they are now, like dark trenches. In the 1960s, together with the architect Gio Ponti, I designed and created a plaza of 2000 square metres for the city of Eindhoven. It was a great success, I believe, without running the risk of being presumptuous. It is from the creation of that square that my idea of hanging gardens sprang. Not a novelty, though, since the hanging gardens were already in use in Babylon.
I almost made one but the very high cost put a stop to it. I must say that the first commission was for a large sculpture, but I wanted to design its setting too, and for that reason I thought of an artificial garden.
Of all that work, I have been left just with the core project: a relief model and a sketch of the sculpture. The garden is made up of large gentle terraced slopes, covered in grass like golf courses along which one can walk.
Some long supporting walls, some areas where one can rest and, in the upper part, a large area accessible from flights of steps where the sculpture stands, almost invisible because of two parallel walls.
The Great Mother – which is what I called the sculpture – is in the middle. Her shoulders, one of her arms and her head are the only visible parts, but the entire figure is there suspended between the two walls, and high enough for people to walk under and be able to look up at it from below, getting the feeling of something imposing but also protective [M.N.].