The forest of sound triumphs in the ADI Design Index 2019. “Resonating Trees” is an innovative project of the Margaritelli family, in which the trees of Piegaro become co-authors of engaging, unique music

For the first time, ADI assigns a place in the ADI Design Index for innovation in a forest. The project is called Resonating Trees and is a creation of the studio BCPT Associati in relation to the forest of Piegaro, in Umbria, owned by the Margaritelli family.

ADI pays tribute to “the quality of the work carried out by the brand, whose results represent a value for design and for our country.” ADI also underlines “the importance of the work of the designer in the collaboration with the company for the promotion of design culture.”

But how can a forest win a prize, and above all how can it make music? It all began when BCPT Associati presented the candidacy of Resonating Trees to ADI as an example of investigation of the relationship between ingenuity and nature, inside the Natural Genius communication format that in the years to come will involve figures from various disciplines.

Listone Giordano, and Andrea Margaritelli, have responded to the challenge launched by Marco Tortoioli to rethink the communication of the values of a brand like Listone Giordano. To shift the brand’s storytelling onto a multidisciplinary plane, involving versatile figures who can interpret, through their work, the relationship between ingenuity and nature; two words that have marked the entrepreneurial history of the Margaritelli family from the outset.

This context could not help but include the green oasis at Città della Pieve, where the Margaritelli family has allowed the sound artist Federico Ortica to transform the forest into an original location for a multisensory installation.

How does it work? The trees are antennae, receivers that intercept variations in the surrounding environment in terms of humidity, water, temperature, seasons, all factors that have an influence on the sound. For Federico Ortica the forest becomes an aural space with which to create a tactile experience, where the irregular arrangement of the resonating trees creates an original three-dimensional soundscape.

BCPT Associati has added a system of visual mapping that conveys the sounds and frequencies in an interactive manner, for a fully immersive experience. “The project comes from my interest in the acoustic resonance of materials, on which I have worked for many years. In Resonating Trees I use the plants as resonating bodies, creating an augmented dimension of the natural landscape,” explains Federico Ortica, whose installations are based on the creation of sound environments that use materials like steel and wood to transmit sound, creating a bond between the resonance of the object and the surrounding natural landscape.