Location: Escales del Carrer de la Pera

Client: Girona City Council

Area: 120 m2

Year: 2013

The installation is promoted to be built during the "Temps de Flors" flower exhibition, the biggest show in the city, attracting almost 1 million visitants every year.

The entire installation is intended to evoke a tactile sensations walk of the fields of reed (=Phragmites australis) in wetlands.
The street is defined as a river of people where the reed is presented as a trace of the presence of water and a witness of the environmental values ​​of these ecosystems, accompanying the visitors, and wrapping them with the color, texture and fragility of these plants, in contrast with the hard and impremeable, stone of the city.

In wetlands the reed grows abundantly.The fragile stem cane, that can make up to 3 feet high, springs in inflorescences like a feather duster. It looks to be soft by touching. The beauty of this inflorescence is not found in the shape or the color of a single unit, but extensions forming dense reed community.
The reedbeds show a sea of ​​flowers blowing in the wind. A landscape of subtle visual and tactile sensations which combine elements like water, earth and air.
The fragility of these communities makes it an endangered species in front of other invasive plants, such as the giant cane (=Arundo donax). This installation shows off the subtle beauty of the reed, a rare plant in gardening, and high environmental value as a wastewater treatment plant.

Cities are virtually impermeable. Stone and concrete floors prevent water drainage inside the soil making plant life and the development of natural systems impossible. The reeds and other similar plants can no longer live in these environments.
Bringing the reed to the city, highlights the artificiality of the water cycle and poor water management in cities. When it rains the water bounces off the stone and flows over the pavement or running through the pipes to the river and the sea, connecting global ecosystems.