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Norway Talks - Interviews on Norwegian Landscape Architecture
Alessio Valmori, de Gayardon Bureau

de Gayardon Bureau is an office for Landscape Architecture and Cities based in North of Italy. The Bureau has a long-time relationship with Scandinavian countries, after years of collaborations, residency, competitions and awards; especially in Norway.

It’s a landscape and culture we admire; an approach to design, planning and to the challenges of the near future, that continually inspires us.

The book collects a series of 5 conversations with Norwegian Architects, Landscape Architects, Urban Planners and Academics loosely focused on Landscape at Scandinavian Latitudes. So it’s a book mainly about Norwegian outdoors, but one can easily ready between the lines, a constant reference to the city of Oslo.

In 2019 Oslo was awarded Green Capital of Europe, stating a condition of excellence in sustainable practices, as well as reminding the fact of a capital city which is literally super-green.

Oslo naturally embodies the Ecological Topos of the Green and Blue City.
The Nature-oriented contemporary urban realm looking for a stronger bond with Nature, even Wilderness.
Oslo city is fundamentally grounded on its Green-and-Blue Structure: the city is framed by a protected wild forest, is criss-crossed by river valleys and embraces the water of the Fjord. It naturally sits on one of the best possible setting conditions, way before this was recognized as a best-practice for ecological planning.

So the interviews tackle this urban landscape and try to question the principles at play in this exceptional framework. What is the role of landscape architecture and planning in defining, revealing, protecting and even enhancing such a condition? How does this almost un-intended best-practice shape people uses, habits, narratives and sense of belonging?

What dynamics at play can be discovered looking at things with the fresh eyes of a foreign look? Is it all so peculiar and site-specific or are there lessons that can be learned and possibly exported from it?

Bio Alessio Valmori is an architect and urban planner. He is founding partner together with Sara Angelini of de Gayardon Bureau, office for Landscape, Architecture and cities, based in Cesena Italy.

de Gayardon Bureau won several prizes in international competitions of architecture and urbanism, and has been lecturing about its work in several Universities and Institutions. The Bureau operates within the threshold between project and research, focusing on urbanity at all possible scales.
In 2016 it was exhibited at MAXXI in Rome, in 2014 and 2018 at the Architecture Biennale in Venice.

Alessio has been a teacher of Art Semiotics and Theory of Visual perception at the European institute of Design in Florence, for 7 years. He has lived and worked in Denmark for 3. He graduated in Architecture from the University of Florence in 2012, and did a postgraduate master in Landscape at IUAV-Venice in 2020.

2020, 235 pages, Color printed CMYK, (includes text, photographic selection and cartographic material)

Author arch. Alessio Valmori _ de Gayardon Bureau (Italy)
Contributors Colm O’Brien (Holt O’Brien architects - Oslo), Kjersti Bjerke Hagen (SLA - Landscape architects - Oslo), Markus Schwai (Associate Professor at NTNU - University of Trondheim), Lena Dänzer Vanotti (Oslo Kommune Department of Planning), Betina Heraldsen (BØGL landscape architects - Oslo)
Location Cesena FC, Italy