Nella Golanda, Sculpted Architectural Landscapes. Installation view at Palazzo Bembo, 2016.

Sculpted Architectural Landscapes (N. Golanda + A. Kouzoupi)
Focus on the landscape qualities codes – the shared “reality” of the “inhabited sculpted spaces”.
The holistic design process of urban landscape interventions to develop the tools needed for the Democritean ‘’Ευεστώ”: synaesthesia, pleasure, present.
“When I designed a public space, my deep and instinctive desire was that from this new space the emotion I had felt in architectural and structured spaces should emerge; spaces that reflect the landscape and the love for detail, spaces where I walked in my childhood. I believe that the most serious events that marked my life is that as a child I played, ran, saw the sky, the nearby mountain, the horizon of the sea, the beauty of Greek vegetation, and the development of the rocks through the structural mirror, as the inhabitants of this place since ancient times up to some years ago. For thousands of years, from the classical temples to the most humble buildings, the inhabitants always felt the joy to experience the miracle of living in human-scale. I could say that as a child I lived in an open-air museum: Greece.
Since 1970 my work was based on the qualities of the Greek landscape through holistic design – Total Art interventions. I believe that living inside of artworks we exploit the opportunity to become members of urban life.
The Total Art design of a new landscape includes the visitor’s experi¬ence; it is not isolated, it belongs to the whole world. It’s no longer kept in museums nor is the property of an individual. Art is completed in the shock of modern life in a subtle embracement that inspires people to participate in the values of the natural and historical surrounding, not realizing that they are living and breathing art"*.
These “inhabited sculpted landscapes” function as interactive experi¬mental vessels for the osmosis of forgotten social relations and new unexpected multi-art genres.
“The Larissa Sculpted River” 1992-1998
The emergence of the just excavated Ancient Theatre in the city center led me to suggest the reconnection of the across time city of Larissa with its lost natural and historical landscape and in particular with the flow of its great river, Pinios, the mythical river, which flows from remote mountain springs through the fertile plain and beautiful ravines of the Olympus mountain, towards its end at the Aegean. The central idea of the holistic design would be the flow of the great river – “The Larissa Sculptured River", the three recurrences in the center with local recycling of large quantities of water leading to the big Ancient Theatre of 3 BC.
A public participation process was embedded through the project development, during the construction process. Local craftsmen and art students from the Workshops of Larissa – Museum Katsigra, Municipal Art Gallery were involved during the construction of mosaic duplicates of the original ones from the Museum, found during local excavations in the center of Larissa.

*From N.Golanda’s presentation of her work, in the European Conference of Prague, 1993.