The artist’s creation is an original artistic pathway which includes the ‘Giardino Verticale’ (Vertical Garden), the ‘Giardino Barocco’ (Baroque Garden), ‘Come se a Torino ci fosse il mare’ (As if Turin were on the sea) and ‘La Maschera’ (The Mask). His project’s design arises from the significant intention to reinterpret the original Baroque garden as a reference to “dreamlike space”, considered as a moment of refined and rigorous decoration of the public space. The original place no longer exists and can no longer exist, but its memory can be born again: in the uprightness along which it climbs, from the courtyard to the roofs, it currently lives as a garden-reference suspended in air.
The use of light implemented by Richi Ferrero has made it possible to carry out an important revival which, by exploiting the weightlessness of the emissions, returns to onlookers’ memories the distinguishing mark of the public spaces characterized by a garden that no longer exists and by a still existing though restyled court yard. A pattern of stones and lights in the courtyard - achieved using 748 resin bars of glowing stones and a 300 metre long illuminated strip - recreates a classical Baroque model with grey-bluish and warmer sand coloured cobblestones which are matched with carefully blended light colours. Above them the tree, principal shade of each and every garden, is rebuilt in steel and suspended in air – between the first and the third floors: 520 kilos of galvanized iron constitute both the trunk and its sustaining branch. Altogether the tree is over 6 metres in length and its diameter reaches 5.3 metres at the most, whilst the supporting arm is 4.3 metres long.
Every branch has its own light and every light changes colour. The principal 13 branches were obtained from 590 kilos of stainless steel pipes, with 78 lights support powered by 180 power packs. As daylight fades away the tree enlightens the courtyard redrawn with the glowing stones.
Around and above the tree the marks are simplified: the garden rises, referenced in the 82 aromatic flower boxes lit by 246 LEDs emitting hot and cold light and hung from the long balconies – in turn enriched by a 230 meter mini-flow of warm light.
At the summit the garden opens up to the magnificence of the hanging flower boxes in dialogue with the sky: as long as the sun sheds its natural light which consents plants and flowers to grow it is still nevertheless a lighting action that enhances the poetry of these flower beds suspended between earth and sky, until darkness permits their daily rest. The Vertical Garden is closed by triangular elements - decorated by the cascading greenery - which alternately peer out from the high squaring of the Palazzo, and open towards the skies thus determining that essential connection for the formal balance of the ensemble.
