PALIMPSEST

PALIMPSEST is deployed through the activation of co-creation processes involving artists, architects, designers, cultural actors, experts and civil society. A call for projects will be launched this summer and will be followed by creative residencies on the three sites. Architecture, design and artistic practices will dialogue with specific site needs and general systemic challenges to imagine new scenarios and experiment with innovative practices linking human actions, landscape heritage and sustainability goals.

PALIMPSEST is inspired by the original meaning of the Greek word παλίμψηστος (palimpsestos, “again” + “scratch”), which describes the process of papyrus writing practices: existing text was scraped and washed away, the surface re-smoothed, and new literary material written on the saved material. PALIMPSEST adopts this perspective of rewriting and bases it on a living heritage approach.

PALIMPSEST envisions regenerating the lost “wisdom of sustainability” that underlies the production of heritage landscapes through the activation of co-creative processes involving creative actors, technical stakeholders and civil society. Here, architecture, design and artistic practices will dialogue with specific site needs and general systemic challenges to imagine new scenarios and experiment with innovative practices linking human actions, landscape heritage and sustainability goals. These experiments will allow us to consider new landscape scenarios aimed at producing specific landscape services, inspired by the generation of beneficial outcomes on ecosystem functions, which the creative contribution of CCIs will make possible. Human practices will become relevant agents of a new sustainable palimpsest process.

PALIMPSEST will integrate the aforementioned landscape services into environmentally sensitive solutions with sustainable financial infrastructures to support the sharing and circulation of positive externalities at different levels among landscape service actors and communities.

PALIMPSEST is built around three pilot projects with strong cultural identity and relevant environmental issues: Lodz (PL), a UNESCO film city struggling with the highest levels of air pollution in Europe; the bangs of Milan (IT), traditional agricultural landscapes struggling with unsustainable water use; and Jerez de la Frontera (ES), an Andalusian vineyard landscape and vernacular site threatened by renewable energy facilities.

Intagram: @palimpsesteu