The name “Case Passerini” used to refer to the old private hunting reserve of the Passerini counts, called the Bandita Pantano. The Italian term bandita, from the expression “mettere al bando” (meaning “to ban” or “to leave out” in English), signified the exclusive use of the environment’s resources, including its wildlife, by the owners.

This so-called bandita represented the plain’s last “natural” wetland, and it still existed until the first decades of the 20th century. Residual traces of its perimeter embankments can still be seen in the first aerial photographs available of the area taken in the early 1960s. Since then, the area has been completely transformed with the construction of the most important industrial area in the province of Florence, named “Osmannoro”. Simultaneously, solid urban waste from Florence and the surrounding municipalities began to be accumulated on its western side. Today, in the collective imagination, instead of indicating the last wetland of the plain, the name “Case Passerini” is associated exclusively with the artificial hill that has been formed by the accumulation of waste.

On the threshold of the year 2000, the management of the landfill site accepted the proposal to reclaim part of the area, and a portion of agricultural land on the south of the landfill was allocated to the project. The land had no longer been cultivated for years and had already been earmarked for the construction of a flood-control basin.

With this intervention, the ancient wetlands could be brought back to life.

The name of this work-site, The New “Bandita”, indicates the new presence of a wetland area in memory of the vaster one that has now disappeared beneath the factories. The artwork assumes a strong conceptual value because it represents a true cultural renaissance of the term “to ban”. Indeed, it now refers to the banishment of planning intervention strategies that, only a few decades ago, led to the rapid artificialisation of the entire zone, without the slightest consideration for the extraordinary identity-based values that distinguished this wetland from the rest of the Florentine territory.

Category

Work-Site

Author

Carlo Scoccianti

Area of intervention

Case Passerini, Sesto Fiorentino (Florence).

Status before intervention

Abandoned arable fields.

Type of intervention

New wetland created with mechanical equipment during the construction of a new flood-control basin. The artwork was then completed by planting aquatic and riparian species thanks to volunteer groups (social art intervention).

Work status

Completed (February 2005).

Authorities/agencies involved

- Quadrifoglio S.p.A.

- Committee for the WWF Oases of the Florence area

Main bioindicators used to monitor the ecological functionality of the work-site

- Great crested grebes (Podiceps cristatus): stopover during migration, nesting.

- Ducks: stopover during migration. 

- Little bitterns (Ixobrychus minutus): nesting.

- Great reed warblers (Acrocephalus arundinaceus): nesting.

- Reed warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus): nesting.