The Benetton Foundation and the Public Gardens Association of America have recognized the Cactus Garden as an artistic creation of César Manrique and a faithful representation of his aesthetic ideal of beauty.
XXVIII Carlo Scarpa Award
The Scientific Committee of the Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche decided, unanimously, to dedicate the study, attention and dissemination campaign of the XXVIII edition of the Carlo Scarpa International Prize for gardens to the Cactus Garden of Lanzarote, part of a special constellation of quarries and craters that "is an exemplary witness to the balance between fertile nature and culture".
This award aims to help spread the culture of "landscape management" and "caring for places". It offers an opportunity and a tool to communicate, beyond the restricted limits of the community of specialists, the intellectual and manual work required to direct the modifications of the place and to safeguard and promote the authentic heritage of nature and memory. It is a work that brings together science, technology, the arts and the professions. A work that is carried out through the identification of the signs and constitutive characteristics of the sites, and that involves creative acts, renovation programs, daily practices of care and maintenance, norms that govern coexistence in the same place, the natural heritage, the sediments of cultural and human presence. It is, in short, a recognition that seeks a balance between conservation and innovation.
The jury of the Carlo Scarpa prize highlights the general singularities of an island geologically modified after the great eruptions of the 18th century and transformed by the hand and thought of César Manrique, who "was able to recognize the value of its spaces and implement tools and practices for the development of a social conscience and its own environmental policy. The contribution of this artist who fought against the tourist exploitation of the island since the sixties of the last century and proposed an alternative growth model" explains in a statement the Foundation, "puts us in front of the unresolved problems in the relationship between conservation and transformation in the field of landscape. Manrique" the text points out, "showed with his work a possible path with works such as the Cactus Garden, which appear as a different way of living on the island and recognizing, with new eyes, the beauty".
The Benetton Foundation considers that the Cactus Garden reflects Manrique's aesthetic sensibility and transmits the desire to leave a mark of a past time. "The Cactus Garden accumulates in a closed space an entire history, that of the landscape culture of Lanzarote, and invites the search and renewal of its characters".
About the Benetton Studi Ricerche Foundation
Created in 1987 by Luciano Benetton, the Benetton Foundation aims to be a testimony to the links of this Italian family with the territory to contribute to the cultural growth of the communities. It is based in the Italian town of Treviso.
Annually, the Foundation awards the Carlos Scarpa prizes for gardens as recognition of a place on the planet with exceptional natural, historical and inventive values. Study campaigns and scientific exchange and debate days are carried out on the award-winning site, which are collected in a monographic dossier.
The award aims to help raise and disseminate the culture of "landscape management" and "caring for places". It offers an opportunity and a tool to communicate, beyond the restricted limits of the community of specialists, the intellectual and manual work required to direct the modifications of the place, to safeguard and promote the authentic heritage of nature and memory. It is a work that brings together science, technology, the arts and the professions that is carried out through the identification of the signs and constitutive characteristics of the sites and that involves creative acts, renovation programs, the daily practices of care and maintenance, the norms that govern coexistence in the same place, the natural heritage, the sediments of cultural and human presence. A recognition that seeks a balance between conservation and innovation. The Carlo Scarpa 2016 prize went to the wild apple forests of the Tian Shan (located in the border region between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the People's Republic of China). Other winners were Maredolce-La Favara (Palermo, Italy, 2015), Osmace e Brezani (Bosnia, 2014), Skrudur, Nupur (Iceland, 2013) and the Forest of San Antonio (in the mountains of the Abruzzo, near the city of Pescocostanza, Italy, 2012). The prize involves the printed publication of a "file" for the knowledge of the place; the collection of relevant bibliographic and cartographic materials that will be available in a documentary exhibition and collected in the library of the Benetton Foundation; the organization of one or more study sessions and a public act, during which a symbolic recognition of the person will be given to the institution or person in charge of the place, formed by the "seal", designed by Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978), the inventor of gardens who lends his name to this award.
The scientific committee of the Carlo Scarpa prize is composed of an architect, two landscape architects, an agronomist, a garden historian, two art historians, a geographer, a botanist and a philosopher.
Also recognized in Canada
The Cactus Garden was also publicly distinguished last week in Canada, specifically during the V Biennial Conference on Garden Tourism in North America, organized by the Canadian Garden Council with the collaboration of the Public Gardens Association of America, held in the Canadian city of Toronto under the generic title "Experiences in the garden + optimal collaborators = Tourist success".
There, the Centers offered the presentation "Why has a cactus garden become a tourism attraction of the first order?" and received from the organization the 'International Garden Tourism Leader' award granted to the Cactus Garden.
In this event, businessmen, suppliers, and professionals of the tourism sector, mainly from the United States and Canada, deploy their knowledge to attract tourist flows from the experiences that can be enjoyed in the gardens as a formula to increase competitiveness, visits and, therefore, spending in a destination.
The president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Pedro San Ginés, and the Minister of Tourism of the Cabildo of Lanzarote and president of the Board of Directors of the CACT, Echedey Eugenio, want to publicly thank the Benetton Foundation and the Public Gardens Association of America "for the granting of these awards, which are visible in the workers of the Cactus Garden but which represent a public recognition of the work, effort and daily work of all the workers of the Centers of Art, Culture and Tourism. These awards also represent a boost to the effort we make to maintain and preserve the work of our most universal Lanzarote native".
