Landscape, materials and transformation

(September 2026) – Openfabric uses landscape design as a strategic tool for rethinking cities and territories. Its work integrates nature into the urban fabric to foster biodiversity, create ecological corridors and enhance urban wellbeing. Its most recent projects range from large-scale urban landscape strategies and historic parks to international regeneration schemes. We discuss the practice’s work with founder Francesco Garofalo.

 

Openfabric was founded in Rotterdam. How has the practice evolved over the years?

Openfabric was founded in Rotterdam in 2011, before expanding with an office in Milan and, more recently, in Genoa, which is becoming our main base. It is the city where I grew up and is currently undergoing a very interesting period of transformation. It may be too early to speak of a renaissance, but it is a place that offers new opportunities, which is why we have chosen to engage with it through our work.

From the outset, however, the practice has had an international outlook. We work simultaneously in very different contexts and do not identify with any specific geography. Our identity stems from a continuous dialogue with different cities, landscapes and cultures, and this is what informs our approach to design.

 

What is the “idea of landscape” that underpins your work?

For us, landscape is not a specialist discipline but a way of understanding the city. Architecture, urban planning and landscape are part of the same process and cannot be addressed separately.

We are not interested in designing a park as an isolated intervention. Every project forms part of a broader strategy concerning the territory as a whole. Landscape becomes the infrastructure through which we address issues such as climate change, biodiversity, mobility and the quality of public space.

A project such as Mantua’s Green Plan embodies this approach. It is not a catalogue of interventions but a long-term vision that redefines the city’s ecological structure through a new green corridor covering more than 115 hectares and a network of around one hundred kilometres of tree-lined streets.

 

 

 

You move with equal ease between the urban scale and the smallest details.

I think this is one of the characteristics that best defines Openfabric. We constantly move from developing a territorial strategy to designing a paving system, because they are two aspects of the same project. The quality of a place depends as much on the overall vision as on the precision with which its details are resolved.

 

 

This is evident in a number of very different projects. In Rotterdam, with Archipelago of Knowledge, we envisioned a new relationship between port and city through a system of islands that reconnects ecology, the waterfront and public space. In Genoa, with the Green Strategy, green space becomes the backbone of urban transformation, while in the Ex Marconi area of Sestri Ponente the regeneration of a former industrial site creates new public space and connections to the Erzelli district.

In all these cases, the project is not the end point but a catalyst for a process of transformation.

 

 

Does the same apply to the new park at the Reggia di Rivalta?

Absolutely. The park at the Reggia di Rivalta, inaugurated in 2025, grew out of the restoration of a historic garden, but our aim was not to recreate the past. We wanted to transform it into a major contemporary public infrastructure capable of bringing together historic heritage, landscape and new ways of experiencing open space.

Today, a project must be able to operate across different timescales: responding to the needs of the present while creating the conditions for future change.

 

 

Ecological corridors are a recurring theme in your work.

That’s because they are one of the most effective tools for reconnecting fragmented territories. An ecological corridor is not a formal element but a structure that connects habitats, people and landscapes.

It may take the form of a river, as along the Mincio in Mantua, a woodland system or even a simple tree-lined avenue. Its purpose is to create ecological continuity while improving the quality of urban space.

This is why we prefer to speak of green infrastructure. These are not simply cycle paths or planted areas, but systems capable of organising the territory and guiding its future development.

 

How do public authorities respond to this approach?

Awareness has grown considerably in recent years. Increasingly, we are brought in because public authorities are looking for a strategic vision for public space.

In Mantua, for example, our work continued beyond the Green Plan with the redevelopment of Via Mazzini, which was transformed into an urban green corridor. We have developed similar projects in the Netherlands, in Tirana and in other contexts where landscape is regarded as an essential infrastructure for urban development.

 

How important is community involvement?

It is essential. Public space belongs to the people who use it, and no project can ignore the importance of listening to them. Observing, understanding and identifying people’s needs are fundamental parts of our work.

But listening does not mean relinquishing the designer’s role. Participation generates knowledge; design requires synthesis. Our task is to transform widely differing needs into a coherent vision.

 

What projects are you currently working on?

One of the most significant is the new Ospedale Maggiore and Ospedale dei Bambini in Brescia, developed together with Park Associati, CRA – Carlo Ratti Associati, Politecnica Building for Humans and the other partners in the design team.

The project envisions the hospital campus as a new public infrastructure in which healthcare, research, education and landscape form a single integrated system. Our contribution is the landscape strategy for the Green Ring: a continuous network of therapeutic gardens, public spaces and ecological connections that embodies the One Health principle whereby human and environmental health are inseparable.

 

 

What role do materials play in your projects?

For us, materials do not represent the final stage of a project but are an integral part of it. We try to avoid standard solutions and, whenever possible, work directly with companies to develop materials and details tailored to each specific place.

I find ceramic to be a very interesting material. It is transformed earth and retains a profound connection with the territory. Like wood or stone, it has a strong expressive quality and can help shape the identity of a space.

A material is never merely a technical solution. It is what gives depth to a project, defines its character and creates a connection between architecture, landscape and the memory of a place. It is this narrative dimension, rather than performance, that we continue to pursue.