Ornamento Radicale / Radical Ornament
Piazzale alla Valle, Mendrisio
Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri
Radical Ornament unfolds along the staircase of Piazzale alla Valle as a visual and symbolic threshold: a vertical passage connecting different levels of the city, as well as layers of perception and imagination.
The intervention engages with Mario Botta’s architecture by welcoming its rhythmic force, while introducing a vital, dissonant element: an imaginary vegetation growing within the grid of the rational. The staircase becomes a site of poetic tension between geometry and ornament, structure and proliferation.
The flora is archetypal—a synthetic ecology germinating on architectural surfaces. Saturated colors and compressed forms transform a place of transit into a silent landscape to be inhabited.
Part of Diffusion 6850, a public art project promoted by the City of Mendrisio and Museo d’arte Mendrisio, coordinated by Giacomo Grandini.
