What is AIAPP? It is the Italian Landscape Architects Association. Founded in 1950, it represents landscape architecture professionals, promoting the protection and enhancement of the territory. It is active in the educational, cultural and scientific fields. With over 600 members, the association organizes events, webinars, publications and conferences. Affiliated to IFLA, AIAPP is a national and international point of reference, with a long evolutionary history and a strong commitment to landscape quality and sustainability.
AIAPP: The Association that Protects and Enhances Our Landscapes
What is AIAPP? History and Mission
The acronym AIAPP stands for Associazione Italiana Architetti Paesaggisti, an organization founded in 1950 by Pietro Porcinai and Elena Luzzato. The association is made up of professionals, scholars and students committed to protecting, conserving and enhancing the landscape through design, research, training and scientific-cultural activities of information and professional updating.
In 1948, in fact, Geoffrey Jellicoe had founded in Cambridge, the IFLA (International Federation of Landscape Architects) with the most prestigious landscape architects in the world and Porcinai and Luzzato felt the need to have an association in Italy that could compare and coordinate with this structure for Italian park and garden projects. Let us remember that the world and in particular Europe, was emerging from two world wars and the reconstruction was part of a broader breath of rebirth that involved all the arts and disciplines.
The pioneering phase
1950
Porcinai and Luzzato were present in Cambridge and, as their first mission upon their return, they had precisely that of founding the AIAPP. This occurred on March 15, 1950, at the Casina dell’Orologio in Villa Borghese. President Vincenzo Rivera (already a member of the Constituent Assembly and a prestigious botanist) and secretary Elvezio Ricci (Director of Garden Services in Rome). The Presidential Council saw Porcinai, precisely, with Elena Luzzato, Raffaele De Vico, Carlo Motti and Mario Bafile. Also present were Giovanni Battista Ceas, Michele Busiri Vici, Giuseppe Meccoli.
1964
Unfortunately, it is not easy to move from good intentions and projects to facts, so little or nothing is done until the relaunch on 16 April 1964, when a young landscape architect Antonella Sartogo Daroda and thanks to the availability of Bruno Zevi, at INARCH in Rome, there is an attempt to relaunch the Association. In the meantime, Mario Ghio and Vittoria Calzolari conduct the first research on greenery in the city that will translate into urban planning standards, still in force today in Italian legislation (Ministerial Decree 1444 of 2 April 1968). Guido Ferrara published “L’architettura del paesaggio italiano” (1968), a modern approach to the interpretation of the landscape.
1973
The first debate on landscape planning in Italy took place in Bagni di Lucca in 1973, in an Italian-British conference entitled “Landscape Architecture”. From the Italian side, personalities such as Guido Ferrara, Giulio Crespi, Mario Ghio, Vittoria Calzolari, Maria Teresa Parpagliolo and also Giorgio Bassani addressed, for the first time, the problems of landscape planning on a rigorously scientific basis.
The relaunch
As the world was changing so quickly, there was a need for continuous updates and relaunches and so the association saw a new revision in 1979 at the Botanical Institute of Rome, president Valerio Giacomini.
In 1988, the presidency of Gilberto Oneto (1988/94) the AIAP allowed a new organization of the association, well structured. The final double P was born for the homonymy with another association with right of precedence.
The mature phase
The IFLA Congress, “Paradise on earth. The gardens of the XXI Century” held in Florence in 1996 becomes a historic date because it allowed the discipline to be made known to public administrations as well as to professionals from other sectors.
In 1998 the magazine “Architettura del Paesaggio” was born under the direction of Alessandro Tagliolini.
From 1994 to 2009 the AIAPP became a solid point of reference for Italian landscape architecture, still recognized as such and seeing the realization of the objectives for which it was born:
the official recognition of the title of landscape architect and the birth of the first university courses in Landscape Architecture throughout Italy.
The Council of Europe for Landscape
In Florence, in October 2000, the European Landscape Convention was signed, in whose drafting some AIAPP members participated.
As Maguelonne Dejeant Pons of the European Landscape Council states:
“[…] We must not standardize and we must have a high quality objective and this is important thinking about the future because it will not be possible to do it in a short time. We must have a vision of the territory for the future. The Convention (of Europe) also spoke about the quality of life and the word quality is for the landscape and for the life of the person. […]”
The other important issue concerns the need for professions. There are many professions directly or indirectly linked to the landscape: land planners, urban planners, engineers who build bridges and roads, landscapers, architects, farmers, foresters, horticulturists, geographers, historians, geologists, climatologists, environmentalists, ecologists, lawyers, economists, sociologists, specialists in culture and cultural heritage, and areas such as gastronomy and health. There is not just one discipline that must work on the landscape: it is a common project of professions that work on the theme and each profession has a responsibility with respect to the theme.
Find here the full text.
The new generation of Italian landscapers
In 2009, the generational turning point came with the young landscape architects trained in the first Schools of Specialization in Landscape Architecture. Paolo Villa became the president and, in 2011, he defined the new guidelines of the association with the members.
In 2012, the Presidential Council was elected in Bologna, which was to manage the IFLA Congress in Turin in 2016. The designated President Anna Letizia Monti managed to organize the IFLA World Congress 2016 in Turin “Tasting the landscape” with great international success, with about 1000 participants from 60 nations.
In June 2016 in Bologna, Luigino Pirola was elected president of AIAPP. His mandate was characterized by the construction of an important network of alliances with universities, institutions and associations and led to the Declaration of Matera 2019 that you can find here.
The history of AIAPP continues with the current board chaired by Maria Cristina Tullio, elected in October 2019.
A point of reference: today the members are more than 600!
Even after more than seventy years from its birth, this association represents a beacon of reference also linked to the IFLA (International Federation of Landscape Architects) and its European section – IFLA Europe for those who wish to stay informed of the evolution of this subject for passion or profession.
To be increasingly on the side of the planet and humanity, for some time now the reference bank to which membership fees are paid has also been chosen as Etica, which works to put finance at the service of people, for the construction of a fair and inclusive society, excluding from financing weapons, fossil fuels, intensive farming, gambling and all activities that it deems harmful to people and the planet.
The AIAPP sections
The association is national and has offices throughout Italy, divided into 9 sections made up of Members, Cultori and Students, so you can easily contact one of these for all the necessary information.
The Association in digital
IAPP has also thought about digital with WEBINARS, annual 3-day meetings brought to digital format. You can find 9 of them (3 webinars related to the three days of the conference for three years) on Youtube at AIAPP Web TV along with other interesting material to follow in your moments of rest from work.
AIAPP periodic assemblies
By joining the association you can participate in two assemblies per year: June and October hosted in various Italian cities, an excellent opportunity to take a few days off to dedicate to listening and visiting.
The magazine “Landscape Architecture”
An added value of the membership is the biannual magazine of the association ARCHITETTURA DEL PAESAGGIO founded in 1998 by Alessandro Tagliolini and now directed by Anna Lambertini. The magazine contains four significant sections: Readings, Projects, Tools and Columns. The magazine is also available to non-members of the association.
Promoter of meetings on Landscape and Territory
The events that AIAPP reports on its website are very interesting to follow, including the IFLA Europe International Congress on Lost Landscapes where they talk about how everyone can and should become a GAME-CHANGER of climate change, and the series of meetings “Cities, territories and landscapes in transformation”.
Who hosts the Italian Association of Landscape Architecture?
Green professionals come from many worlds: from art school, from work in a bank, many have come from gardening. The association welcomes the complexity of the activity of AIAPP members who are significantly, in many cases, also active at the architectural, sustainability and ecological, legislative and regulatory, journalistic and communication levels, creating a complete and exhaustive reservoir of figures capable of managing the territory in all its complexity.
Who can join the Association?
AIAPP is a non-profit association that is joined on merit and therefore undertakes to represent, in the world of greenery, a quality brand for the registered professional. Holders of a Degree related to Landscape Architecture (part of the disciplinary areas of Architecture, Engineering, Forestry Sciences and Agricultural Sciences, Land and Environmental Sciences), who can demonstrate possession of a set of professional, educational, cultural, scientific, didactic requirements, can become members.
The mondo del giardino advice
The association represents a qualified tool available to citizens to promote the improvement of the quality of life in cities and inhabited spaces. AIAPP brings together competent and far-sighted professionals, committed to reflecting on the future of humanity and the relationship between man, greenery and nature, with the aim of preserving the essential bond of the human being – as an integral part of the ecosphere – with the world around him.
Now on horseback! Work awaits us! Our new wonderful outdoor space is about to be born!
GOOD WORK and … if you have any questions please write to info@mondodelgiardino.com
The images nourish the mind and heart of beauty. We thank AIAPP and in particular the Landscape Architect and Professor Biagio Guccione the Landscape Architect Marco Minari for the information and images provided.
