The Forest of San Gregorio. A heat island management experience to Spoleto
It was inaugurated today, Sunday, June 30, 2024 at at 10 a.m. in Piazza Garibaldi to Spoleto, the Bosco di San Gregorio, an experimental project of environmental sustainability that was born from the collaboration between the Municipal Administration and the Foundation Festival dei Due Mondi, from always attentive to the ESG issues of Agenda 2030, under the supervision of scientist Stefano Mancuso, full professor at the Department of Agricultural Science and Technology at the University of Florence. The project, carried out with the support of Bocci Vivai and the participation of Echo Labs by FERCAM & DACHSER as Sustainability Partner, envisages the installation in Piazza Garibaldi - in the space in front of the Cathedral of San Gregorio now designated to parking - of an Italian-style Garden, made with native plant individuals.
The project involves the encroachment of two parallel rows of 10-12 m high Cypress trees with the presence of box hedge, flanked from an internal area of 5 m high mulberry trees with canopy diameters from 4.5 -5 m. provided from Bocci Nurseries.
With the support of Pnat (Project Nature), an emerging think tank of designers and plant scientists founded from Stefano Mancuso, thermal imaging cameras will be installed to show the contribution of trees to heat island mitigation and the cooling effect in the plaza. On special displays it will be possible to visualize temperature changes in a scene, highlighting warmer or cooler areas through different shades of color.
The benches and planters placed in Piazza Garibaldi were made by reusing wood from materials from packaging to disposable from the logistics chain of DACHSER & FERCAM Italia, reworked in upcycling logic by the carpentry of Echo Labs, the group's social enterprise that employs asylum seekers and that also this year was awarded the "Welcome. Working for Refugee Integration" by UNHCR Italy, the UN Refugee Agency. For the duration of Festival dei Due Mondi the square will be animated by Echo Labs' carpentry workshops, in which adults and children can contribute to create new furniture for the square itself, guided by carpenter artisans in an experience of eco-design and responsible consumption.
The participation of the Foundation Festival dei Due Mondi in the realization of the Bosco di San Gregorio is one of the many initiatives that from four years the Festival dedicates to the themes of Environmental Sustainability with the aim of raising awareness and implementing actions consistent with the national strategy of adaptation to climate change, characterizing the city of Spoleto as a place of scientific attractiveness. Just yesterday Prof. Mancuso, after last year's highly applauded lectio magistralis, returned to Spoleto as part of the Festival's official program with another packed lecture on the state of the Planet and possible remedies to save it.