Paola Lenti will present the new indoor and outdoor collections through an emotional and visual experience at the Chiostri dell’Umanitaria, a historic Milan institution, renowned for its role in promoting arts and culture.

The location is a former 15th century Franciscan monastery developed around four renaissance cloisters, with secret gardens and original spaces, full of charm and history.

Paola Lenti has started a major multi year restoration project of the Chiostri, which ultimately will give back to Milan a renewed and enjoyable location.

In these unique surroundings, and in each of the settings, Paola Lenti will take you on a journey that weaves the ancient with the modern and allows you to experience with all of the senses this year’s collection, through a combination of colours, sounds, scents and objects.

The green areas will be designed by Enea Landscape Architecture, in tune with the architecture and the surroundings. The choice of the green elements and the harmony of their setting will give each garden a different style and a unique personality.

via San Barnaba 38, Milan Centre

Paola Lenti

Paola Lenti

Paola Lenti, founded in 1994, specialises in the production of flooring and seating furniture for indoors and outdoors.

Headquartered in Meda, the company’s products are distributed in over 60 different countries and is today an international reference for textile innovation in the design world.

Enzo Enea

enzo enea

The Tree Musuem

On June 14, 2010, the Tree Museum situated on 75,000 square meters of breathtaking land near Upper Lake Zurich in Rapperswil-Jona, Switzerland, officially opened its gates.

The Tree Museum exhibits individual trees from Enzo Enea’s 2000+ species of trees collection.

Enzo Enea is a Swiss landscape architect and one of the world’s most prominent tree collectors.

The Tree Museum and the sustainably-built headquarters are located on the grounds of a 14th Century monastery, and the museum displays Enea’s personal collection of trees, which Enzo has gathered over the past 17 years.

In a series of open spaces we show our appreciation for trees by using them to create spaces in a unique way that integrates aesthetics, sustainability, history and lifetime.

“Our passion for landscape architecture and our tireless creativity to explore new structures and forms of garden rooms led us daily through the design and construction of this great project.” – Enzo Enea

The Museum’s first mission was to emphasize the exceptional presence, beauty and rarity of the exhibited trees, while on a second, deeper level, Enzo Enea’s constellations will help shape visitors’ perception of primordial attributes of life such as time and space, and how these are so intrinsically embedded in the very quintessence of these ancient, venerable trees.

The idea of creating a tree museum was a natural extension to Enea’s work as a landscape architect as many years of intensely observing and studying trees combined with an increasing understanding of how to sense and handle them not only provided the foundation for his reputation in the field, but also instilled in him a boundless admiration and respect for these most extraordinary creations of nature.

In order to share these experiences with a wider audience, Enea decided to indeed dedicate a “Museum” to his trees, thereby implying that they are equally worthy of the care and attention we usually reserve for objects in such an environment. His concept of constructing open-air ‘spaces’ – a characteristic of all Enea gardens – allows for trees to be singled out and to become ‘individuals’, as visitors are led to walk around these rooms and to observe them from different angles.

The Tree museum was designed and built by Swiss landscape architect Enzo Enea with the help of Oppenheim Architecture + Design (OAD), who designed Enzo Enea’s new headquarters.

Enzo Enea selected Chad Oppenheim from a group of eight leading architects from around the world to design the headquarters along with the Tree Museum. Enea chose Oppenheim because he felt that he best understood what he wanted to accomplish with the Tree Museum — the headquarters are designed to act as the perfect backdrop to showcase the trees.

The building itself does include a number of sustainable features, such as the use of sustainably-sourced local wood, which blends with the surrounding forest, natural daylighting, efficient insulation, a green roof and a geothermal heating and cooling system.

The Tree Museum houses 2,000 trees on 2.5 acres, with a special installation of about 50 species personally curated by Enea from around the world. Trees are highlighted against sandstone wall backdrops and include 22 different varieties ranging from Taxus baccata to English yew, Pinus sylvestris, and Scotch pine.

Enea has collected these trees over the last 17 years during various projects when trees had to be removed from the site.

So instead of getting rid of them, he kept them and now has his own special museum, where visitors can view hundreds of trees for a reasonable fee