When the summer and the heat arrive, city life
makes you dream of cool woods and of an uncontaminated wildlife, where one can
shelter from the scorching sunshine and live in contact with the green world.
It would be fantastic to be able to just
open the door and enter a secret world;
an oasis in the heat of the city, hidden
in the heart of your life.
I still remember the first time I had seen the
urban oasis of my dreams; I was a little girl and I was watching an amusing
movie starring Andy MacDowell and Gérard
Depardieu; the movie, set in
New York, was based on the protagonist's passion for a fantastic indoor
garden and on her determination to get it at all costs! I was so charmed by
such a fascinating space that I've always added a touch of green to
interior design ever since. Vertical gardens are absolutely my greatest passion, but for a real oasis you
have to look for something different. Of course the cutest indoor gardens are
always the most secret ones, but I could find a few interesting ones.
In Italy, in Monza, a former theater
has been transformed into a residential
loft with a green heart. The designing was
complicated because of the
important heights (about 40 feet), and of the particular plan. The windows too, that develop
on one side, show the same huge dimensions. To be able to exalt all the
features of the wonderful structure, the interior has been completely cleared
out, leaving just the space for a big
green central heart surrounded by the most absolute white. All the life of the
building develops around its green soul.
Not hidden but agreeably visible from the
outside the mini gardens designed in Tokyo by the architect Ryue Nishizawa.
It's just one apartment that develops on
several levels; a tiny lot, just 345 sq ft, exploited at the top of its
potentiality. A minimalist experimentation
of an urban garden with plants flowering
in different seasons; each floor has its own function that merges pleasantly
with the natural design. You can really live the sensation of a life in strict touch with
nature.
But how can you satisfy your fondness for a
green space with tiny available space? In this case you have to use your
imagination and a good deal of design!
Even if you can't have large gardens or dehors,
with two trees, two mirrors and the planning creativity of a landscapist you
can get a splendid tree-lined avenue.
Proof of this is the project ”étant donnés” by the studio Mitnick Roddier Hicks
that explores the world of illusion: infinite gardens in a space of just 3.5
mt.(11.5 ft). This landscape concept had been conceived on the occasion
of the contest exhibition "Mobiles! Gardens for a World in Motion" in
Chaumont-sur-Loire in France. The need for
making its tranportation and installation easy, excited the creativity of designers used to measure themselves with
quite different dimensions.
The
installation aimed at representing the difference between opposites: formalism
and naturalism, luxury and frugality, durability and faddishness. Mirror is the
artificer of vanity and represents how hard it is to see beyond the
surface. It's a landscape that unrolls like a rug, it's a “transportable”
garden. The project takes its name from
the artist Marcel Duchamp's work “Etant donnés” (Philadelphia Museum of
Art), an ambient installation based on the illusion of form.
Now I feel refreshened up!
