Pietro Porcinai and the Landscape of Modern Italy ed. by Marc Treib, Luigi Latini (review)

The Italian landscape architect, Pietro Porcinai (1910–1989), spent over fifty years creating modern landscape architecture works in Italy. Porcinai’s conception of modern landscape architecture was unique in that it was equally dedicated to the celebrated garden design conventions of the Renaissance era as it was devoted to the needs and aesthetic sensibilities of his own time of the 20th century. Raised among the clipped hedges, water parterres, and intricate rocaille-work of the Villa Gamberaia, where his father was head gardener, Porcinai was well acquainted with Italian garden design traditions. After graduating from the Agriculture School of Florence in 1928, he traveled to Northern Europe and developed a life-long relationship with numerous modern landscape architects from Germany and Britain. Thus, Porcinai was perfectly suited to champion this particular vision of Italian modern landscape architecture. During Porcinai’s career, he realized more than thirty-five designs for private estates and factories, published articles on landscapes and gardens in magazines such as Domus, and in 1979, won the Ludwig von Sckell Ring, the first non-German awarded this honor.

Unfortunately, very few English-speaking landscape architectural or architectural historians know of Pietro Porcinai. The authors of Pietro Porcinai and the Landscape of Modern Italy seek to rectify this oversight. Edited by Marc Treib and Luigi Latini, the book explores its subject in five themed chapters: “A Life and its Cultural Context” by Luigi Latini, “A Dialogue with History” by Tessa Matteini, “Topography: Found, Modeled, or Constructed” by Marc Treib, “Plants and Planting” by Sara Tamanini, and “Working with Architects: Collaborations, 1937–1980” by Franco Panzini. Treib and Latini also provide a biographical and professional outline of Porcinai’s life and work. The book’s thematic framework is noteworthy as it allows the authors to deeply examine some of the main characteristics defining modern landscape architecture in North America. These characteristics include: emphasis on human use and enjoyment, employment of basic shapes and forms, abstraction of any historical references, importance of grading as the most powerful dimension of landscape architectural design, plant use for their spatial qualities, en masse plantings of a limited number of plants, and the selection of plants with contrasting textures and colors, and continued collaboration with architects. Many of these features were defined by Treib (1993) and in his subsequent writings.

In the opening chapter, Latini reveals how Porcinai relied on traditional Renaissance garden design practices. Regarding Porcinai’s design for the sixteenth-century Villa I Collazzi, south of Florence, Latini notes, “Key to the success of the design were the studied relationships and proportions that governed the new design, the regard for the greater landscape, and the resolute mass of the villa” (Treib & Latini, 2016, pp. 10–11). Latini also demonstrates how Porcinai used a modern formalist vocabulary in his work with simple shapes and forms, such as the circular planter beds that appear to float across the pool at the Villa Fiortia in Saronno. Like the Renaissance designers before him, Porcinai too worked for emerging capitalists in both their domestic and professional endeavors. Indeed, Porcinai worked for some of the most powerful industrial elites in Italy, such as Ermenegildo Zegna and Adriano Olivetti. In doing so, he explored novel garden uses, like the outdoor showrooms for the Ermenegildo Zegna textile factory. Latini also shows how Porcinai brilliantly disguised a parking garage at the Villa II Roseto (1960–1965) in Florence. Latini observes, “The roof garden above the garage was surprising, with inventive shapes executed in clipped boxwood that energized a magnificent belvedere from which to look out over the surrounding hills” (p. 27).

In “A Dialogue with History,” Matteini demonstrates how Porcinai employed an “inventive conservation” in his approach to redesigning historic gardens...