Created in the council housing complex in Via Scarsellini, in the Mirafiori North district of Turin, Claudia Losi's Transatlantic Flowerbed is an island of greenery. It was triggered by the desire of a group of women residents, and was one result of the participative design project for communal areas, within the framework of the Courtyard Project of the Urban 2 Urban Regeneration Programme. "When I saw the courtyard in Via Scarsellini, the first image that came to my mind was a big ship". This is how Claudia Losi came up with the idea for Transatlantic Flowerbed. An idea that transforms a green area under-used by local inhabitants into a space where they can spend time, sit, meet one another.

The Transatlantic Flowerbed, which covers an area of 600 sq.m., consists of a garden raised by soft waves of grass, upon which seven hemispheres of green concrete "float". These hold evergreen plants, set inside plant and animal shapes. The garden, enclosed by a low perimeter wall, contains a seating system, likewise of green concrete, which embraces an inhabitable space within which is a large table covered with the imprints of leaves. The central pathway, which crosses the flowerbed and has been traced along pre-existent paths, is decorated with majolica ceramic tiles; these were painted by maestro Franco Raimondi from Vietri, to drawings by the artist. The tiles depict the "views" of courtyards suggested by the inhabitants, as part of the action Mirafuori Mirafiori, proposed by the artist during the project's start-up phase, and that culminated in 2005 when a neighbourhood festival was held in the area.

Claudia Losi

Claudia Losi was born in Piacenza, Italy, in 1971. She held solo exhibitions in galleries and public institutions, in Italy and abroad, such as MAXXI museum in Rome, the Stenersen Museum in Oslo, the Ikon Gallery in in Birmingham. In 2007 she took part in the 8th Sharjah Biennial, in the Arab United Emirates. In 2004 she inaugurated the Balenaproject tour, starting from the creation, in 2001, of a full-scale whale of the Physalus species in woolen fabric, which touched various locations in Italy, Europe and overseas, such as the MACC of Guayaquil and at the Centro Cultural Univesidas Catolica of Quito in Ecuador. She often develops collective and site-specific projects. Amongst the most recent there is the one in the exhibition Autoritratti at MAMBo museum in Bologna in 2013.