Eternal City – Eternal Garden
Team
Name: Ching Yee Jane Li
Nationality: Hong Kong
Institution / Company: Newcastle University
Name: Xiaoqian Zhou
Nationality: Chinese
Institution / Company: Newcastle University
–FINALIST of Re-Nature Rome Competition
While Ancient Rome was a wild place with rich biodiversity, the historical structures now stand bald and bare under the changes throughout the years. Situated next to the Colosseum, the Eternal Garden aims to resemble the landscape to bring back both the cultural and biodiversity loss under anthropogenic decimation. It acts as a new local hotspot that fosters ecotourism and efficiently promotes biodiversity and habitat preservation in its spaces.
The garden looks into the relationship between natural and artificial, as well as between human and broader living forms. It rethinks the definition of beauty in the Eternal City, through the inclusion of non-human beings in the experience, and a range of scales and biophysical environments are created for the components to accommodate all users. Besides, research spaces and viewing points are also included for tourists and locals. It provides educational values for visitors while connecting them with the surrounding heritage site.
The structure can be seen as a continuous process of reversing the actions of urbanisation, where living components will continue to sprawl in the surrounding of the site. This provides secure migration corridors and aid species move across changing maps. Ecology is a long term evolution, and the Eternal Garden strives to flourish and bring wildlife back to Rome once again.
#Ecosystem restoration #Re-wilding #Ecotourism #Natural heritage #Beautification & Public Space
