Radicepura Garden Festival | Grandi Giardini Italiani

In anticipation of the fourth edition of the Radicepura Garden Festival, which will take place next semester from May to November 2023, now is the time for ideas. Landscape architects, agronomists, garden designers, botanists, nurserymen, urban planners, engineers, artists, students, curators and anyone with the skills to design and create a garden are invited to participate in the CALLforIDEAS!

The theme of the fourth edition of the Festival is The Garden of Plants, as identified by the artistic director of the Festival, Antonio Perazzi. Therefore, in the projects submitted, the gardens should be a celebration of biodiversity, the natural landscape and the Mediterranean man-made landscape. The gardens will have to be innovative, attractive, usable, able to capture the attention of visitors, and resistant to the climatic and environmental changes of the 6-month duration of the Festival, reducing maintenance requirements to a minimum. At the end of the edition, the garden that has evolved best over the six months of the event will receive the Gardenia Prize, a special award from the garden magazine.

The international competition is open to those under 36 - individual professionals or teams of emerging architects - to create 6 gardens that address the proposed theme. There is also 1 garden reserved for the category over 36. The gardens will be created at Radicepura, the botanical park in the province of Catania, in Giarre - between Mount Etna and the Ionian Sea - in close communication with other gardens designed by internationally renowned landscape designers and works of art. The garden designers will have the opportunity to express their creativity, making use of the most original plants cultivated in the Piante Faro nursery, which has more than 3000 different species of tropical, succulent, aromatic, Mediterranean and citrus plants.
Participation in the competition is free of charge and the 7 projects selected by the jury will have a budget of 10,000 euro between the supply of plants and materials.

To participate in the CALLforIDEAS you have until 14 November 2022.

Type of Selection
Radicepura Garden Festival announces an international competition for the selection of garden designers who will have the task of designing and creating 7 temporary gardens. The selection is international as an open competition looking for new ideas.

Participation requirements
Professional freelancers or teams of emerging architects, landscape designers, agronomists, garden designers, botanists, nurserymen, urban planners, engineers, artists, curators, and all those with the skills to design and build a garden can participate. The Festival encourages participants to
form multidisciplinary teams. The selection is also open to companies, associations, cooperatives, schools, and universities.

The competition includes six under-36 gardens for students or young professionals: all
members of the design group must be younger than thirty-six (36) on 30 November 2022.
Students will be able to use a university tutor older than thirty-six (36).
The call is also open to the over-36 category, without age restrictions, for the creation of 1 garden.

Each designer or member of a design group can submit only one application. The winning designers of previous editions of the Radicepura Garden Festival cannot participate.

Application
Candidates should submit the project according to the online guided procedure, which they will receive via email upon registration, by the deadline of November 14, 2022, at 12:00.
Participation is free.

Selection process
The selection process of the winning designers will be divided into two phases.

[*] PHASE 1- IDEA
The designers are asked to illustrate their projectual idea for a garden in the form they prefer through a synthetic dossier that describes a concept, adding a title and a short explanatory text with reference images and evocative sketches capable of conveying a botanical vision and idea.
After examining the dossiers, the jury will choose the best projectual ideas and select the finalists called to participate in the second selection phase, assigning them to a specific project area from the areas of the Festival on the basis of which they will give a new interpretation of their project for the final phase.

[*] PHASE 2 - SPACE PLACEMENT
The designers are asked to place their idea of a garden in the assigned area by developing an
executive project provided with technical drawings, construction details, and a planting plan, as well
as a financial estimate of the project which must not exceed the total cost of € 10,000 unless there
are independent sponsors who have agreed to cover the excess extra costs.

The gardens will be selected by an Artistic Jury and by a Technical Jury, on the basis of:

PHASE 1
[*] The creative response to the theme proposed for the 2023 edition
[*] The originality, coherence, and clarity of the design idea and the potential interaction
with the public
[*] The contribution of the project the arte dei gardini and to innovation

PHASE 2
[*] Consistency with the initial idea, feasibility, and respect for the budget limits assigned.

The shortlist of the first gardens selected in PHASE 1 will be communicated to the participants by 28th November 2022 via email.
The Festival reserves the right to invite garden designers to create installations/gardens at the Radicepura park.
The list of the 7 winning gardens which will be created by the team that has presented the project and that will be guided and supervised by the staff of Radicepura will be communicated to the participants by January 27, 2023, via email.

Grandi Giardini Italiani Srl

Grandi Giardini Italiani Srl