Morning began with case studies of the Biltmore Estate, Callaway Gardens, Starkey Ranch and work by the Prince's Foundation project in Lincoln. The first three explored family legacies of trying to create special places out of often denuded landscapes. An extremely useful tool presented by Hank Dittmar of the Prince's Foundation is a graph adapted from Steward Brand that shows 'pace layering' - the differing rates of change that cities must accomodate.
This means that some things like fashion happen on a faster cycle and must be accomodated within the body of the city, without losing the longer cyles of culture and nature, which must be sustained and stewarded. The effort is relentless, a Sysiphusian quest to hold the destructive parts of human nature and Mother Nature at bay long enough for civilization to gain some traction.
For lunch, we trouped off to a wonderful example of a relatively new Italian legacy project, Fattorie di Donatella Cinelli Colombini. that was actually in the family in the 1600's, then returned to them in 1919 (the virtue of patience). The properties have often been passed down from mother to daughter, and today Donatella has a winery run by all women. They have two main wines of the area, the Brunello di Montalcino and from the other valley Nobile di Montepulciano. They also make a new wine that is the 'poor stepsister' of these two famous wines - Cenerentola (Cinderella). The lunch was magnificant, with unbelievable soups and fresh pinci - hand rolled local pasta - and a meat fountain (see below).
Afternoon we moved to Castello di S. Giovanni d' Asso - home of Museo del Tartufo (Truffle Museum). We reviewed projects in Woodstock and Sundance that showed the need for a blend of public and private, for-profit and non-profit entites to sustain the villages and the landscape that contains them.
After another stroll with the whole group in San Quirico, we collapsed with only the crusts of panini to sustain us for the evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment