“I propose a different concept for the construction sites in progress in the city to make new buildings, new infrastructures. Contractors alter the environmental context with their worksites, creating true wounds on the territory. All this can be transformed into an opportunity to generate a process of continuing communication between companies, agencies, clients and the surrounding urban context, making the worksite into an extraordinary event, a ‘happening’ through which to inform the inhabitants of the territory in question about what is being constructed and its purpose, transforming the site into a tool of communication at the service of the environment and the community.”
This is the objective with which Gianfranco Dioguardi, honorary president of Fondazione Dioguardi, has organized the Cantiere-evento initiative, for which the first example in Italy was in 2017, with the Teatro Lirico Giorgio Gaber. A cultural proposal that in this period of government incentives becomes very timely, considering the new urban spaces created by the many ‘packaged’ scaffolding system that punctuate our cities.
The latest worksite-events have been produced in Fasano, Puglia: in February the installation ‘Luce dei miei occhi’ by the artist and architect Vincenzo D’Alba at Palazzo Savoia-Ancona, and on 19 March another by Serena Confalonieri on the façade of Palazzo Carrieri. With the title Flores Leves – Sono nata il ventuno a primavera, the latter site-specific work is dedicated to Alda Merini and the arrival of spring. It has been ‘applied’ using worksite materials and the surface of the tarps covering the scaffolding. Curated by Vito Lamberti and Francesco Maggiore, president of Fondazione Gianfranco Dioguardi, Flores Leves has been made in collaboration with the students of IISS Leonardo Da Vinci in Fasano, following a workshop conducted by Serena Confalonieri.
The title, which means “light flowers” in Latin, refers to the floral macro-pattern reproduced with large petals and the lightness of the tarps that move in the wind. Inspired by the lace and pottery typical of this region, the work exploits the material weave of the material to take on three-dimensional dynamism. The selected colors and linear elements that complete the decoration refer to the geometric abstraction of artists like Franco Grignani and Louise Bourgeois. At night the ‘floral constellation’ brightens the center of Fasano, thanks to lighting fixtures inserted in the flowers.
