Increasing biological and spatial diversity. Dialectics of design and scientific experimentation.

This contribution addresses an experimental scientific project aimed at increasing biodiversity through afforestation, developed by a multidisciplinary group in various parts of Italy within the National Biodiversity Future Centre, Spoke 5 Urban Biodiversity. The focus is on projects carried out in the Città Metropolitana of Milan and in Pistoia, involving the discipline of landscape architecture, in a multidisciplinary environment. The project has a particular nature being scientific while also incorporating spatial and design-oriented disciplines. It engaged with a variety of plots to be repeated, adapted, and monitored in diverse contexts, addressing both the ideal conditions of a scientific project and actual spatial ones. The process and interventions are discussed from a landscape architecture perspective showing the role that can be played by the discipline and reflecting on the value of diversity, both biological and spatial.