TRENT, ITALY.-This project consists of opening the ex-Michelin wasteland to the public. It will be an opportunity to know it as it is now before it is constructed. Wastelands are places of the city that generally are not regulated by a plan, yet develop according to dynamics of chance. Thus, in these terrains vagues, nature develops through spontaneous influences, whether those of the land, the wind, the sun, the vegetation or of other elements that occur. Wastelands are very important because they are the only spaces open to the imagination. From the moment that they are not preconceived, inside them anything is possible and there one can expect anything. Not long from now, this area will be developed, this invitation to visit it is an opportunity to know it before it disappears.

The wasteland is positioned inside the fences of the old Michelin factory in Trento, at 47 Via Sanseverino. It is an enormous terrain of 113,000 square meters (about 28 acres) that extends along the train tracks and the Adige River, between the Palazzo delle Albere and Via Monte Baldo.

The area will be open an entire weekend: Saturday December 16 and Sunday December 17 from 10:00 am to 4:30 pm. Access is via the south gate, on Via Sanseverino near Via Monte Baldo.

The Michelin factory, active for nearly seventy years, is a symbol of the transformation of the city of Trento. In the Twenties it was constructed on the land near the river, which furnished the water necessary for the production of special cotton fabrics useful in the production of tires. From the beginning it projected employing around one thousand workers, mostly women. Many services for workers were planned inside the area, like dining halls, residences, cinema, theater, tennis courts and soccer fields.
Following the bombardments of the Second World War and the transformation of the process of producing tires using steel cables, in the Sixties the Michelin plant saw its best moment. This phase was followed by the protests of workers and the heavy lay-offs of employees in the Seventies and Eighties. Today all that remain of the old settlement are some low, ruined buildings on the north side, the original gates facing Via Sanseverino, and the land, now forgotten by the city, isolated by the railway and the fencing that encircles it and hides it.

Soon a Museum of Science will be contructed in this area, with a greenhouse and a research center on this site. The architect Renzo Piano has planned the reintegration of the area with the life of the city through a system of passages under the train tracks and new water courses.

The wasteland is an island of green in the city, where nature has for some time grown autonomously. The ground and the vegetation that live there act and mix among themselves generating a new habitat, that does not correspond to any other environment present in natural zones or surrounding urban gardens, thus giving form to an area with specific characteristics.

Here live together trees planted many years ago, that have survived demolition and that have spontaneously reproduced, with wild species as well. The most massive examples are traces of the original settlement, planted for ornamental reasons: the Atlantic cedar, with the pointed top and branches turned upwards, the Deodar cedar, with sloping branches; the persimmons of Chinese origins though common in gardens in Trento; the poplars arranged in rows; or the evergreen plants meant to compose a hedge along the bordering fence, but that once abandoned, developed into trees.

This area, temporarily unused, is repopulating itself. Small exemplars of poplars that one can recognize by their yellow leaves are visible everywhere: they are forming a spontaneous poplar grove. They are rapid-growing trees, typical of river zones. To confirm that it is an area that is affected by the influence of the river, there are also some small willows growing. There are many overgrown plants as well; among the most common: the butterfly bush, common in gardens for its spikes of purple flowers; Artemisia; or climbing vines like ivy, clematis and Japanese ivy.

The conformation of the soil itself is influenced by the presence of Adige River, and of the parallel Adigetto. Digging, one finds a terrain of fluvial origins, made of rounded cobblestones and sand. The fact that puddles dry up with difficulty is testimony to the presence of an underground layer of water that extends from the river to here.