LEUKOS
Leukos meant ‘white’, in Magna Graecia, but also ‘bright’, ‘lucid’, ‘limpid’, ‘serene’: adjectives well suited to the soft, powdery subsoil of Aeolian Lipari and the radiant cloud of fresh-water vapor that, in the landscape design project described in these pages, brings new life to an area whose natural vitality has been diminished by decades of quarrying. Drawing on the resiliency of Nature as its primary constructive force, Leukos proposes a garden that will be an ontological and epistemological microcosm, an epitome (in the archaic sense of a thing representing something else in miniature) of the living Mediterranean landscape and of some of the symbolic meanings that have been attributed to it by its inhabitants.
For millennia, on Lipari, volcanic rock has been quarried. Well before the start of the Greek age, the island was known throughout the Mediterranean for its deposits of obsidian, the glassy black volcanic rock formed by the rapid solidification of lava without crystallization. Today the archaeological museums of Europe and the world exhibit weapons and tools made from the precious Aeolian stone, whose possession brought the islanders wealth and power. In the modern age obsidian gave way to pumice, the light, white, porous volcanic rock formed when a gas-rich froth of glassy lava solidifies rapidly. Much sought after by industry for its abrasive quality, natural pumice was gradually substituted, in the last years of the last century, by compounds created in the laboratory. Faced with an unsustainable economic as well as ecological situation—the quarries have destabilized the slopes of the mountains, covered the sea floor with a thick layer of debris and profoundly changed the island’s populations of flora and fauna—in 2006 the mining company that operated on Lipari ceased operations.
While it is true that the extraction of pumice has caused an ecological crisis, it is equally true that, in recent times as in the Neolithic, it has had a positive impact on the economy of the island. For several generations the quarries have created wealth and distributed locally, thus preventing the abandonment of the places and the exodus of the population—a phenomenon still in progress, especially in rural areas of the archipelago—which in the past has led to significant emigration of the islanders to the New World.
Socio-cultural desertification brings particularly serious harm to Mediterranean ecosystems, so deeply marked by the work of man and, therefore, dependent for their survival on human attention. In contrast to the landscapes of northern Europe or North America—where the science and philosophy of ecology were born—that of Mediterranean is in fact a working landscape subjected for over thousands of years to the action and will of its inhabitants: no ethical judgment concerning the ecological consequences of farming or grazing, mining or industry, will be effective unless it is based on the consciousness of this peculiarity.
Leukos aspires to restore ecological diversity and to reconstruct ecosystem integrity in a natural context clearly dominated by man. As there is not enough space in the archipelago to protect the natural heritage within specific reserves (although some steps in this direction have already been made in the islands and adjacent areas of mainland Italy and Sicily), Leukos will carry out its restoration work through actions that enhance the natural heritage of the archipelago without decreasing the utility of the system as a whole.
Key to Leukos is the safety of the quarry and its conversion from an industrial site to an object of natural and cultural heritage. Whether the property in the area remains in private hands, or passes to a body of a public nature—a foundation or a park—the area will be subject to a conservation easement to ensure its protection according to a strict management plan developed by a specially constituted advisory committee.
The area of the quarry will be stabilized with appropriate measures of consolidation of the exposed rock faces and enhancement of soil fertility. Areas that have been deprived of topsoil, rich in humus, will be brought back to levels of biological integrity capable of supporting plant cover, and their colonization by native plants will be encouraged. In memory of those who lived and who died in the quarries, a substantial proportion of these will be preserved as an open air museum. Some historic industrial buildings connected with mining activities will be restored and renovated to house exhibition spaces, educational facilities, a 0km restaurant and a small hotel—a live-in museum of sustainable consumption where guests can learn to live in harmony with the natural environment without sacrificing the familiar comforts of their contemporary lifestyle. A steam-based desalination plant will be built to provide the “park”, and the island, with a constant and reliable supply of drinking water (which is currently lacking), and clean, renewable electricity.
Finally, one of the most important actions will be to overlay the physical landscape with an oneiric landscape rooted in the symbolic systems of the Magna Greece and especially in the Orphic conception of death and rebirth. Through this action we intend to strengthen the historical continuity with classical antiquity, taking as our starting point those inner values that are as relevant today as they were in the past, at this crossroads of northern and southern, eastern and western cultures. Thus Leukos will offer the residents of Lipari a unique opportunity to create, for themselves and for others, tangible and intangible assets of inestimable value, promoting the biological diversity and ecosystem integrity of a natural environment that has always—or almost always—been dominated and guided by humans. Leukos therefore promises to be a ‘bright’, ‘lucid’, ‘limpid’, ‘serene’ example of reconciliation ecology—an epitome fully replicable in the Mediterranean and wherever the interplay between man and nature is inextricable.
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Paul Blanchard 