Over the last 20 years, a vast system of new, natural environments has taken shape just a few kilometres from Florence, based on original criteria in the field of design and artistic practice connected to the landscape and ecology of these places. Comprehensively documented in this book, these works represent an extraordinary reality and a huge collective heritage with cultural, artistic, natural and landscape value, offering themselves to the public as an innovative, continuous fusion of art and environment, environment and art.

Involving numerous international experts on artistic and environmental culture in a rich programme of field visits, conferences and public discussions – the latter held at the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art in Prato – since 2012 a broad debate called “Artlands” has developed around the work of biologist Carlo Scoccianti, the originator of these interventions.

The various reflections and observations that have emerged from these events, and which are included in this publication, highlight the uniqueness of this type of research that is both aesthetic and ecological, lying in a domain shared by science, architecture and contemporary art. For the first time, the landscape is no longer an object serving as the background or accommodating a project or installation (Land Art). Neither is the landscape the physical context for architectural interventions or a complement for new architectures. Instead, with its large dimensions and features, the landscape itself is the subject that becomes the artwork (Art Land).