12 Facts About Pietro Porcinai

Pietro Porcinai is renowned as one of the most outstanding Italian landscape architects of the twentieth century.

Pietro Porcinai designed a wide variety of projects on the most diverse scales: gardens and public parks, industrial districts, hotels and tourist villages, motorways and agricultural areas.

Pietro Porcinai met famous plant breeders and horticulturalists and the most eminent European garden and landscape architects.

In 1937 Pietro Porcinai began writing for the magazine Domus directed by Gio Ponti, which rapidly become Europe's most influential design publication.

In 1938 Pietro Porcinai settled a studio in Florence with the architects Nello Baroni and Maurizio Tempestini.

In 1950, with a handful of other pioneers, he fathered the foundation of the Italian section of the IFLA in the form of the AIAP of which Pietro Porcinai was for many years secretary and, from 1979 on, Honorary President.

Pietro Porcinai was engaged in large-scale projects such as the new Brennero motorway in northern Italy and the intricate relocation of the Egyptian temple of Abu Simbel for UNESCO.

Pietro Porcinai was convinced of the need to apply the lessons of the garden to the ecology of the urban context.

Pietro Porcinai attacked the arrogant imposition of architectural theory on the modern city.

Frustrated by the architects' domination of design education in the Italian universities, in the 1960s Pietro Porcinai resolved to establish an educational centre at Villa Rondinelli.

Pietro Porcinai won numerous prizes and awards, including the In-Arch prize in 1960 and the Award of Merit from the School of Environmental Design of the University of Georgia, and in 1979 the Friedrich Ludwig von Schkell Golden Ring by the Academy of Fine Arts Munich.

Pietro Porcinai contributed to magazines and newspapers including Domus, Garten und Landschaft, Architecture d'Aujordhui, and other minor journals such as Il giardino fiorito, Flora, etc.