It’s Flower Time
60th Temps de Flors – Girona, 9-17 May 2015
Author: Mila Nikolić
One of the most beautiful examples of urban curating is Temps de Flors (Flower Time, cat.) in Girona, Spain. Organized this year from 9th to 17th of May – just two weekends and the days between, as much as cut flowers can live in water – its 60th edition is defined as “an exhibition of flowers, monuments, courtyards and gardens”.
The tradition started in 1954, in organization of the Female section of the Falange, as a modest flower decoration show in a lounge of the Municipal Theater. After decades of confinement in the Romanesque Benedictine abbey of Sant Pere de Galligants (Archaeological Museum of Catalonia) next to the old city walls and the Church of Sant Domènec (Aula Magna of the University of Girona), in 1992 – that famous Barcelona Olympic year – Temps de Flors crossed the river Galligants and spread all over the Barri Vell to become the major event of Girona.
This art, design, land art, landscaping, architectural, urbanistic – and also commercial, touristic and gastronomic – exhibition-festival-itinerary-competition colours the old town in Northern Catalonia in new feelings and sensations. It opens up the hidden patios and halls of antient palaces; guides through squares, narrow streets, porticos and stairs; enters the Jewish ghetto, Catholic churches and Arabic baths; twists around the city walls, towers and parks; peeks into the university, museums, theaters, banks, restaurants and shop windows, all dressed up for the occasion in contemporary flower installations. It makes accessible what usually is closed, transforms the invisible into visible, makes the forbidding inviting, turns the historical into experimental, renders the ordinary special, and the special – even more precious.
60th Temps de Flors – Riu Onyar – photo Danijela Ćuk
TF 2014
TF 2014
TF 2013
TF 2013
Temps de Flors is above all a celebration of Spring, of flowers and beauty and nature, but it is the city, its history, architecture, spaces and monuments what is in the center of its didactic progamme. The distinctively contemporary touch in the design of ephemeral spaces singles this event out of many other flower festivals. It reflects the ideas of living heritage and of art ennobling the everyday life, ensuring its success far beyond the frontiers of the province. The Flors de Nit (Night Flowers) prolong these nine days boiling of cultural events – concerts, exhibitions, human castles – well into Saturday nights, while the organization, which includes both volunteering spirit, downloadable audioguides, and support of Spanish National Railways (RENFE), makes more than 200,000 visitors flow easily every year in this picturesque calm town. Temps de Flors, with the complexity of its contents and goals, is an extraordinary example of urban curating turning urban planning. An example to cherish and follow.
60th Temps de Flors – map
CITY OF MUSEUMS. Museum Clusters in the Contemporary City, by Mila Nikolić, architect 