Art & Nature, are the themes proposed this year by the international program GREEN ISLAND, during Milano Design Week.

The Garden of Flora is a urban green project created for Garibaldi Train Station, with vegetation grown and selected by Vivaio Coccetti. Botanically inspired art works Lost in Flora; created by Bloom&me (artistic duo formed by Carolina Trabattoni and Valeria Vaselli) will be presented. These works will be joined by Monocle; sculptures made from natural materials by Antonella De Nisco. Every afternoon at 5 p.m. in the Station Atrium it will be possible to participate to a guided garden tour on art, beauty and sustainability, curated by Claudia Zanfi.

In addition, a special project for this 20th edition of Green Island / Milan Design Week, is the creation of Nido d’Ape / Honeycomb a series of small beehives for solitary bees, conceived by the international design studio CARACOL, an innovative research group in 3D printing. The material used for this particular project is polylactic acid or PLA, a biodegradable and compostable bioplastic that is derived from processing sugars of natural origin (beets, corn, sugar cane). Let's follow the GREEN ISLAND trail and be enchanted by the power of nature, art and eco-design.

IN COLLABORATION WITH: Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (Gruppo FS Italiane); Comune di Milano; Isola Design District; Bloom&me; Caracol; Antonella De Nisco Studio; Vivaio Coccetti; Consorzio Tutela Lambrusco; Artribune.

GREEN ISLAND (www.amaze.it) program is founded to promote a cultural investigation on contemporary urban landscapes, providing a dialogue between community and territory. It is created out of the need to bring citizens back to a dimension of greater harmony between the city and the green public space. GREEN ISLAND sets out to provide a moment of reflection, as well as giving space to planning energies addressing key themes such as sustainability, urban green areas and the landscape as a whole. The project has been operating since 2002 in the Zona Isola Milano, between Garibaldi train station and the centre of the city, involving a large network of arts and crafts workshops, design and architecture studios, as well as proposing site-specific installations created especially for the occasion. Among the projects developed by
GREEN ISLAND there is an important editorial activity, with publications dedicated to spontaneous weeds (Flora Urbana), to artists gardens (The Mobile Garden) and to new forms of urban landscape (The Gardens of Piet Oudolf). Green Island has won various international awards, including EXPO in CITY 2015; TIMBERLAND AWARD for urban creativity.

Claudia Zanfi, art historian, cultural promoter and botanist. She collaborates with public and private institutions on cultural and editorial projects, dedicated to art, society and landscape. In 2001 she founded and directs the international GREEN ISLAND program, for the implementation of public space and new urban ecologies. From 2005 to 2015 she directs the European programs ATLANTE MEDITERRANEO and ARCIPELAGO BALKANI, with projects in Sarajevo, Skopie, Tirana, Tangier, Istanbul, Beirut, Tel Aviv, Marseilles, Athens, Palermo. In 2010 she founded the school of eco-design ATELIER DEL PAESAGGIO (www.atelierdelpaesaggio.wordpress.com), for the regeneration of abandoned urban spaces, the construction of urban bee-hives and artist’s gardens. She taught at the Domus Academy and at the Polytechnic of Milan; at the Middlesex Univeristy in London. She collaborates with Unesco Heritage and Council of Europe. She won the First Prize for Parco dell'Arte in Mantua; she is a finalist for the projects of Lausanne Jardins (CH) and the Biennial Public Space (Barcelona).