“The Contemporary Swamp”, Swamp Synthesis

The concept of the project lies in not stopping at imitating an ecosystem that is generated and regenerated, but representing an "environmental situation" that is transformed through human action and is perceived with the change in color of the water.

uranine, a green dye with a biological composition that is absolutely non-toxic for flora and fauna, usually used by marine biologists and speleologists to identify water flows, is used here in a scenographic key to reflect natural light during the day and to obtain, in the evening, an extraordinary effect through the UV rays of the special lights, which make the water fluorescent green and the vegetation a suggestive blue.

This result was achieved thanks to the skilful design of Andrea Ambrogio Mazza for Flux CS, which allowed the perception of the landscape to be changed between day and night through the choice and arrangement of the lighting fixtures.

The installation, consisting of a body of water, within which aquatic plants coexist (Lemna minor, Nymphaea "Islamorada", Colocasia esculenta "Tea Cup", Colocasia eclusenta “Black coral”, Thalia geniculata “Red Stem”, Baumea rubiginosa “Variegata”, Canna tuerckheimii, Cyperus Papyrus) and aerial vegetation, the Tillandsia usneoides, has a fluid shape and, thanks to a platform that crosses it, created with porcelain stoneware tiles from Cotto D'Este Pura collection it wants to encourage the viewer to enter and walk through the body of water, immersing themselves in a piece of nature rich in biodiversity.

Those who walk along the path in the dark bamboo forest that frames the swamp are guided by the light of the luminaires with a strong minimal connotation from the Shanghai collection by Giuseppe Maurizio Scutellà for Platek. The rest areas are then completed thanks to the positioning of the Cotto D'Este seats created through the use of Advantage Skin, the new stone effect that hybridizes some of the most suggestive mineral textures present in nature.

The installation won the Villa Carlotta Award, for the valorization of art in the garden, where nature and human ingenuity coexist harmoniously.