Hugging Humanity installation

A colonnade of trees is intended to represent a metaphorical embrace of humanity at the moment of difficulty deriving from the pandemic emergency. The installation, placed within the context of the Natale degli Alberi [Christmas of Trees] initiative promoted by the Municipality of Milan in December 2020, is inspired by Bernini’s famous colonnade. Eight trees created with the technique of ‘scandole’ [shingles] (small overlapping wooden boards) have been arranged to form an ellipse on the square of the shrine of St. Joseph in Largo De Sabata in Milan. Here the shingles take on a special meaning, almost representing all the individual efforts that, placed together, have allowed a global problem to be tackled: because cooperation is the only path for facing a complex issue such as the pandemic. In this light, the installation is a hymn to people’s capacity for imagination and cooperation, people who succeed in joining together around a common purpose and combining individual contributions in a powerful mosaic that can lead to an unexpected result. At the top of every column, a real tree, the symbol of life.
The characteristic of Bernini’s colonnade is precisely the fact that it is impossible to capture it in a single gaze, prompting visitors to continually change their point of view among the multiplicity of columns. In this sense, the AMDL CIRCLE installation plays with the balance between unity and plurality: it is just one, but it is multiple. Each column is formed with a number of shingles, each small detail becomes progressively larger and all the elements together create unity. At night the trees are lit up, animating the city for a regeneration of the public spaces, which remained half in shadows in the darkest moments of the pandemic.
As a sign of the responsibility towards nature and a sustainable approach to architectural planning, the fir shingles have been produced by transforming waste products from the manufacturing process. All the elements of the installation have been chosen in order to be reused at the end of the event.