A year ago Paolo Villa, founding partner of AG&P greenscape, left us. He was a mentor and a point of reference for us, and we continue to ask ourselves what his thoughts would be on our landscape projects and beyond.

Today we want to tell you about one of his projects conceived some time ago, which we had the honor and pleasure of completing and which we are particularly proud of: the book by Paolo Villa, entitled “Stories of Gardens / Garden Stories. Lake Maggiore”.
This volume honors his work as a designer and thinker, his philosophy and his working method through the story of a series of projects linked to each other, which have interpreted landscape corners on the shores of Lake Maggiore. In addition to beautiful images, the book contains sketches and notes of travel notebooks that Paolo Villa has transformed into precious gardens.

The book, published by Rizzoli, will be released in late spring. Today, however, we want to give you a preview of the cover with which you will soon find it in bookstores and which we think best represents Paolo’s work.

In the book there are also several testimonies of those who lived in close contact with Paolo during his professional life.
Among these, Giacomo Cocozza, architect and entrepreneur, with whom he has collaborated for a long time and who remembers him with a short contribution (extracted in part from the book) that we want to share with you on this anniversary.

A friend and precursor.
I had known Paolo Villa since we were boys, companion and friend of youth.
We lost sight of each other until we met by chance in the mid-eighties, both architects, he specialized in the landscape, I real estate entrepreneur.
At that time, attention and care for the landscape were not considered a value or a priority. Declaring herself a landscape architect induced expressions of amazement and disbelief, especially in the concrete and brisk environment of Milanese entrepreneurship, but this always happens to those who are “precursors”.
Instead, his vision, the energy with which he believed in the centrality of the landscape and in its enhancement and care, intrigued me and prompted me to ask myself questions. I decided to consider his point of view in my work, and many years later I can say that this intuition has brought me great satisfaction (…). Paolo knew how to anticipate the times and he did it until the end. In his maturity he also understood that every project is a story to tell, like the splendid gardens contained in this volume, which fully reveal its essence. He was aware that we all need beauty, but above all we want to get lost in a story, discover treasures and have revelations.