PPP-Panchina Post Pandemica
Client:
ThinkBig–Fondazione Cariparma–Lude
Location: Parma
Year: 2021
Status: completed
Project:
Design: -ini architetti
Photo credit: Barbara Rossi
Greenery supply and maintence: Emc2 Onlus
Logistics: Il Parmense Trasporti
Cultural Partner: MaMiMò
Co-organized with: Comune di Parma
The temporary monument Post Pandemic Bench investigates coronavirus pandemic and the national Italian lockdown of March 2020. A focus on Human and Nature relationship.
From April 12th 2021, ten modules of Post Pandemic Bench (in Italian, Panchina Post Pandemica) were placed in the main and central square of Parma, Piazza Garibaldi, Italy.
Eight trees and ten benches compose an architectural and artistic installation, as a result of a long process started during the Italian first national lockdown (march to may 2020). The monument inhabited Garibaldi Square for six months (from April to October 2021) and changed configuration hosting site-specific activities.
The project resulted among the winners of the second edition of the public call ThinkBig, launched by Cariparma Foundation with LUde (Free University of Education) to boost participation of young people (under 35) in local development processes.
Post Pandemic Bench is built on important collaborations and partners, starting from the collaboration and co-organization of Comune di Parma (the local Municipality) in particular of Youth Policies Dept. and Culture Affairs Dept.
The Post Pandemic Bench arose from a question, as the authors Francesca De Angelis, Francesca Giannini and Alice Giroldini explain: “After the national quarantine, how will it be possible to inhabit the city again and to get citizens to overcome the pandemic shock starting from public space and city life?”
The benches, realized in waterproof-treated white concrete, steal the roundish shapes from the sofa, an object to which we have attributed a symbolic value as the everyday space that hosted us during the lockdown domestic isolation.
The temporary monument was conceived and designed to change over time; the Post Pandemic Bench modules changed their position together with the trees, which are part of the module itself, starting from a layout that allowed people to sit only on two of the benches, until the final setting in which they got closer together and formed the shape of a circle.
This choice is once again symbolic: the three phases represent the salient chapter of the story we have lived during the lockdown.
This continuous change allowed people to experience the space of the square, from unprecedented perspectives.
The public artwork served also as stage of particular events conceived as a moment of collective reflection, in particular an artistic performance and a research for an educational path that took place in secondary schools in September 2021.
Check the website here.