| Summary: | What does the tourist town of Limone on Lake Garda in Italy have in common with suburban
Montreuil in France? Reinterpreting the infrastructural constructions to house fruits in these
places, this paper will trace their lesser-known architectural marks through the urban
landscape based upon established memories. In 19th century-Europe the citrus and peach
industries reached their peak, but by the turn of the 20th century these sought-after
agricultural/luxury commodities went into decline: peaches were no longer tattooed with
artisanal stamps and lemons were tainted with a disease. First, this paper analyses the citrus
architecture, specifically the lemon greenhouses along Lake Garda’s towns. Then, it
compares them with the criss-cross spaces for peaches within walls (aka peach walls), created
in suburban Montreuil, near Paris. Observing the links between these two cases, it is
concerned with memory traces, argued herein as promoting functional vestiges in European
urban landscapes.
Referring to German landscape architect Leberecht Migge’s writings, the paper questions
why such functional vestiges operated as alternative allotments in the urban landscape
elsewhere in Europe. How have they provided luxurious spaces or the cleansing of
entrenched spaces for those who live or work outside the city or suburb? Although the spaces
within such infrastructural constructions have since declined, peach walls have subsequently
been converted into public spaces as with Jean Nouvel and Michel Desvigne’s 800 kilometres
‘seam’ design (2009) near Paris. And traces of the lemon greenhouses have inspired David
Chipperfield’s new private luxury houses (2015) at Lake Garda. This comparison of the
remnant fruit-growing traces of Limone and Montreuil through the landscape enabled
remnant spaces to become sustainable places today. Urban citrus-spaces cleanse
microclimates and the conversion of peach walls provides us with beneficial changes as
communal spaces.
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