While travelling to reach the village of Asolo we observe the effects of the prevailing of a profit-oriented logic on the government of the Padan landscape. The forty kilometers of plain, that separate Asolo from from the motorway exit, are characterized by a lack of personality of the crossed territories. The landscape we see almost confuses with other similarly anonymous places in the provinces of Brescia, Verona or Padua. We are in the extended suburbia of the Po Vallery, where wonderful villages and historic towns are in contrast with the surrounding land that has experienced a rapid and fierce development. The territory of Asolo is no different from this point of view. Somehow here the contrast is even more marked. While the old town is becoming a place of boutiques, happy hours, Sunday entertainment and tourist attractions, and all kind of exhibitions, the forms of community living are slowly dissolving without regenerating elsewhere.
Outside the medieval walls, in the flat lands, the new "Down Town" grows a bit haphazardly. A polycentric and vibrant settlement, sprinkled with sheds, homes of all sorts, supermarkets, parking lots, roundabouts, sports centers, bike paths and sidewalks, and all those features that favor a modern appellation. A non-city, a widespread urban center, which favors motorized mobility, and where the quality of aggregation points is poor and disappearing. At a deeper level, disorientation and alienation are a common condition in the weakened territories of the widespread Padan "suburbia". The fear of urban void favors the use of cement and asphalt to fill what remains of the countryside, an ever less recognizable agricultural landscape. We look at a succession of buildings without a coherent public design. A convulsed, almost euphoric, urban planning. On the field, the wounded remains of a recent past. What is missing is the definition of places, the sense of measure, the distance from the center, all in favor of an insatiable urban continuum.
In this general discord, the photographer Davide Galandini sought a reference in the landscape that could define the gait of his seeing. Asolo's Rocca (fortress) is the first physical and symbolic reference that any visitor can notice even from afar. Its presence determines a non-random distance and qualifies an immediate relationship with the territory, avoiding that typical feeling of being lost. Thus the one who looks can question the relationship between past and present. What represents history is a steady point, and what is the present circles around. With this project Davide Galandini somehow tried to reduce the distance between these time poles, placing them on different plans but in the same perspective, while underlining the need for greater dialogue and exchange between the parties. In fact, distance is not only a sizable measure, it can become social when it is perceived and lived as such.
Down Town Asolo
While travelling to reach the village of Asolo we observe the effects of the prevailing of a profit-oriented logic on the government of the Padan landscape. The forty kilometers of plain, that separate Asolo from from the motorway exit, are characterized by a lack of personality of the crossed territories. The landscape we see almost confuses with other similarly anonymous places in the provinces of Brescia, Verona or Padua. We are in the extended suburbia of the Po Vallery, where wonderful villages and historic towns are in contrast with the surrounding land that has experienced a rapid and fierce development. The territory of Asolo is no different from this point of view. Somehow here the contrast is even more marked. While the old town is becoming a place of boutiques, happy hours, Sunday entertainment and tourist attractions, and all kind of exhibitions, the forms of community living are slowly dissolving without regenerating elsewhere.
Outside the medieval walls, in the flat lands, the new "Down Town" grows a bit haphazardly. A polycentric and vibrant settlement, sprinkled with sheds, homes of all sorts, supermarkets, parking lots, roundabouts, sports centers, bike paths and sidewalks, and all those features that favor a modern appellation. A non-city, a widespread urban center, which favors motorized mobility, and where the quality of aggregation points is poor and disappearing. At a deeper level, disorientation and alienation are a common condition in the weakened territories of the widespread Padan "suburbia". The fear of urban void favors the use of cement and asphalt to fill what remains of the countryside, an ever less recognizable agricultural landscape. We look at a succession of buildings without a coherent public design. A convulsed, almost euphoric, urban planning. On the field, the wounded remains of a recent past. What is missing is the definition of places, the sense of measure, the distance from the center, all in favor of an insatiable urban continuum.
In this general discord, the photographer Davide Galandini sought a reference in the landscape that could define the gait of his seeing. Asolo's Rocca (fortress) is the first physical and symbolic reference that any visitor can notice even from afar. Its presence determines a non-random distance and qualifies an immediate relationship with the territory, avoiding that typical feeling of being lost. Thus the one who looks can question the relationship between past and present. What represents history is a steady point, and what is the present circles around. With this project Davide Galandini somehow tried to reduce the distance between these time poles, placing them on different plans but in the same perspective, while underlining the need for greater dialogue and exchange between the parties. In fact, distance is not only a sizable measure, it can become social when it is perceived and lived as such.
