Art to narrate transformation, Carlo Stanga for LAND

Passionate about drawing since he was a boy, to later pursue a career in architecture, Carlo Stanga shares his time between Italy and Germany. At some point, his talent and work as illustrator supplanted that of architect, in the sense that illustration expressed architecture as content. As Stanga explains, "This work is tailor-made for me, where I can indulge in many passions: illustration, architecture, urban planning, travel, cinema, literature."



Carlo Stanga's works have been published all over the world, and have received numerous awards and recognitions. Some of his most famous works include the book "New York in Style", which gathers a series of illustrations of iconic places in the Big Apple; "Venise, la ville à la mer", which charmingly depicts the canals and streets of Venice; and "I love Paris", which celebrates the beauty and elegance of the city of love.
The theme of the city is predominant in Stanga's repertoire and, for this very reason, seeing a series of works instead focused on landscapes was quite a special experience. Asked to illustrate LANDmagazine, the magazine published by the international landscape consulting company LAND, Carlo Stanga proposed "WanderWorld", a title that "suggests wandering in the the landscape, an unplanned journey that leaves room for the pleasure of serendipity", as the illustrator explains. And what better place than the Wunderkammer, the LAND exhibition space, conceived by Andreas Kipar, CEO and co-founder of the studio, to share these wonders with the public of Milan Design Week 2023?
The installation was created thanks to the collaboration with Spazio81, a partner of the project. Large images printed on a cotton canvas support depict, in a refreshingly current way, a journey to discover the landscape around us beyond the city. Because examining the contemporary landscape and the intra-urban and regional dimension, as well as the new relationships between human beings and nature, often intimately linked and indistinguishable, becomes increasingly important and urgent if we want to change course.
Carlo Stanga joyfully explores the themes of the LAND studio, which accompanies the urban regeneration process in many cities, until the landscapes we live in become "productive", referring to the psychophysical well-being of users, climate resilience, biodiversity.
LAND’s Wunderkammer thus honours its name – the chamber of wonders –, becoming a place where viewers can be inspired and amazed. As architect Andreas Kipar explains, "landscape knows no boundaries, and it is with this awareness that we have cultivated our story since the beginning in 1990. As landscape architects, we increasingly play a decisive role in constructing landscape stories capable of regenerating urban communities and entire territories. Our task is to cultivate relationships between the parts".



During the talk between Carlo Stanga and Andreas Kipar on the occasion of the vernissage of the installation for the Milan Design Week, moderated by the director of Artribune, Massimiliano Tonelli, the discussion in fact focused on these aspects and on the recent paradigm shift in the perception of the landscape that surrounds us and which we are a part of. A new ethic requires a new aesthetic and if this is interpreted by an artist like Carlo Stanga, it becomes much easier to get key messages across, thanks precisely to their joyful interpretation that gives us hope for the future, not so much of our planet but of us as a human species.

Christiane Bürklein

Project: LAND e Carlo Stanga
Installation: LAND (Erica Boncaldo, Raikhan Musrepova)
Location: Milan, Italy
Year: 2023
Photos: Francesca Macis