The curiosities of Genoa's neighborhoods. OSA: the experimental garden inside Arena Albaro Village.
Those walking towards the Albaro Pools, inside Arena Albaro Village, sooner or later come across some information panels that are a bit out of context with swimming pools and sports fields: they talk about vegetable gardens, plant guilds, sensors, and hydroponic cultivation. These are the panels of OSA, the Arena Albaro Experimental Garden — a project that has coexisted for years with the historic rationalist complex from 1935, a few steps from Arena Albaro House.
What is OSA ( the experimental garden in Arena Albaro)
OSA was born from the meeting between two Genoese organizations: Helpcode, an NGO active since 1988 on children's rights, and Gruppo FOS, a Genoese tech company founded in 1999. The project was co-financed by the European Union through PON Metro funds, also as a response to the pandemic, with the aim of bringing a small urban sustainability and environmental education laboratory into the city.
The project has two souls living together in the same space.
The first is the Wild Garden, a natural agricultural garden inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka's "don't-do" philosophy, built using the technique of plant guilds — actual small multipurpose food forests designed to support themselves.
The second is the Smart Agriculture part with the Microcosm simulator (a European patent signed by the FOS/ENEA Group) and the IoT Eye-Trap traps for smart pest monitoring. A small technological laboratory applied to a vegetable garden, rather than just any green space.
Around all this, OSA also carries out a curriculum aimed at schools of all ages, with citizen science workshops.
How is the situation today
Public sources on OSA mainly report on the launch phase, dating back to late 2022 and still talking about the future. For this reason, before writing about it, we asked Alessandro Bartoletti directly, who follows OSA in the field for Helpcode: the project is still active today. The gardens are regularly tended and kept in order, and guided tours have been organized periodically for those interested in seeing both the wild garden and the smart agriculture laboratory up close.
It is therefore not a space with fixed hours or free opening to the public every day: the information panels can be read at any time passing by the Albaro Pools, while for a guided tour —especially the indoor technology laboratory part— it is best to write first. Anyone interested can contact Alessandro Bartoletti (alessandro.bartoletti@helpcode.org) directly to ask for information or arrange a visit.
Why it's worth knowing, if you're staying in Albaro
Arena Albaro House It is located exactly inside Arena Albaro Village, the same complex as OSA: it is therefore one of those area details that a guest rarely discovers on his own, and which is worth telling those who stay with us and like to understand a little more deeply the neighborhood in which it is located — between the historic pools of '35, the greenery of the park and, indeed, a small open-pit experimental agriculture laboratory.
Photo: Courtesy of the OSA team (Helpcode and FOS Group).
Comments