Riqualificazione paesaggistica e land art per il recupero ambientale. Design out waste in Landscape Architecture and Land Art

It was not until the second half of the XX century that artists and designers, with a growing awareness of environmental issues, refocused attention on the multiple relationships between waste management, public awareness, and aesthetics. Artists and designers began to challenge traditional limits and started considering landfills as settings of artwork, sport and recreation facilities, eye-catching monuments in the landscape. This contribution discusses people’s changing attitudes toward waste and illustrates international best practices of “Design Out Waste” in landscape architecture and land art. The emergence of contemporary projects dealing with waste landscapes is presented through a twofold analysis of contemporary waste-related design and art projects. On the one hand, innovative ap-proaches that transform existing waste and landfills into productive, safe, inviting, and publicly accessible green infrastructure. On the other hand, post-industrial sites able to bring people closer to landfills and facilities by integrating educational, sport and recreational activities within the everyday urban environment. The two approaches represent ways to develop workable strategies aimed at transforming the liability of waste management into socially attractive assets in which everyone participates. New York City “Per-cent for Art” program is a design reclamation project for Fresh Kills Landfill, a 900-hectare site and largest landfill in the nation. Under the roof of the former pithead bath at the Zollverein colliery, in the Ruhr District, PACT has created a space for lively encounters and exchange between actions, experience and theoretical discourse which supports and forges long term co-operative practices and partnerships. Another project, a flattopped brown mound, known as Hiriya, is located on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, just by Ben-Gurion International Airport: the landscape park, designed by the German landscape architect Peter Latz, is named after the iconoclastic soldier and statesman, farmer and for-mer prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Hiriya is set to become an environmental beacon and a theme park on recycling for children, tapping into a global concern.