The garden-orchard at Casalgrande Padana Old House, designed by Kengo Kuma, was among the winners at the Brand&Landscape Awards 2016 for its effective integration of architecture and landscape on an industrial site, and its capacity to promote a new vision of entrepreneurship and work, production and research environments.
To mark its 50th anniversary in 2010, Casalgrande Padana launched an initiative aimed at upgrading the landscape of its production sites and bringing the community a work of high architectural and landscaping quality. The result is CCCloud, a spectacular landmark designed by Kengo Kuma (his first work on Italian soil) and built on the roundabout in front of the Casalgrande Padana production facility.
The partnership with the Japanese architect then continued with the renovation of the Old House, a typical Italian farmhouse which has survived the radical changes brought to the area by industrialisation, and has now been turned into a historical archive, documentation centre and venue for exhibitions, cultural meetings and events.
The area surrounding the building was re-designed too, to create a visual connection between Kuma's CCCloud, the production site, the Old House and the orchard planted around the house to a design by the Japanese architect.
And this is the garden-orchard that won a prize in the Brand&Landscape Awards 2016 – a competition held by the National Council of Architects and the magazine Paysage TopScape –
to draw attention to the social function of architecture and the synthesis between industry and landscape, production and territory.
With its imposing volume, the Old House communicates effectively with the exterior space, which is now furnished with an orchard of over 170 apple trees planted in spoke-like rows around the central hub of the CCCloud.
The parallel walkways, made out of white ceramic with a textured surface for high levels of non-slip performance, give the impression that the ceramic is floating on the gravel, suggesting allusions to Japanese gardens and intensifying that feeling of lightness that is the hallmark of Kuma's style
