Historic Washhouse in Italy Earns Verdant Makeover

The 2024 Landscape Festival in Bergamo mixes lush greenery with colorful outdoor furniture from Pedrali. An iconic site in the Città Alta (Upper Town) of the northern Italian city of Bergamo is the Antico Lavatoio, a historic wash house built in 1881. Sheltered by an open cast-iron and metal slab pitched roof, an elongated white marble tank is carefully partitioned and engineered with a drain system to release dirty water—despite the low hygienic standards of the time. Last month, the wash house and its surroundings hosted “Choose Your Future: Green or Dry—Pedrali at the Antico Lavatoio,” an installation by Greta Bianchi, Marco Togni, and Michele Pezzoni for Bergamo’s annual Landscape Festival.

Aiming to express a balance between nature and humankind as an answer to today’s environmental challenges, the team of artists enticed residents of the city to relax with artfully arranged container gardens, lush greenery sprouting from tree stumps, and outdoor furniture from Pedrali, the Italian manufacturer headquartered nearby. Flowing through the installation was a 130-foot-long ‘river,’ crafted from light blue-painted wood coated with a reflective, semi-transparent film.

“In order to address global crises, it is essential to adopt practical solutions such as those geared toward ecosystem conservation, sustainable resource management, and the development of green and blue infrastructure—the networks, that is, of natural and semi-natural areas in a territory,” says Togni.

The river is intended to symbolize the timeline of past (when ecosystems were not influenced by man), present (when ecosystems are unbalanced), and future (when man and nature find a balance and way to co-exist).

 “The project thus explores two scenarios: a negative one, where nature is overtaken by human actions, and a positive one, with a balance between humans and nature,” explains Pezzoni. “The choice is up to us,” adds Bianchi.