This article was written after an in situ visit to the Renaissance Italian gardens in the region of Lazio in Italy, combined with theoretical research on the topic. It examines the balance between narrative meaning and corporeal experience which might either establish or subvert the communicative order in the Italian Mannerist Garden. The Villa Medici di Castello and the Sacro Bosco of Bomarzo are the two main examples that guide us through our investigation.

This was a research design competition in which we were called upon to investigate all the meanings of eight people eating together. We started the design right after the publication of our article "Os and Bucca". The function of mouth as bucca— suggesting a corporeal experience as well as a mouth that is able to fully taste—became the conceptual basis for our proposal. In our restaurant, speech and sight are limited: as the body sinks into darkness, the other senses are heightened in consequence.

This was an ideas competition with the aim of taking advantage of the garden of a 16th c. villa in Bologna and of an existing warehouse inside the plot, converting it into a craft brewery and a restaurant. The goal of our proposal was to completely deliver the warehouse to the garden, laying it bare, unveiling its structural quality of functioning as a canopy, making it sensorially part of the garden's grove. The new programme is sited beneath the canopy, in close relation to the garden.

One of the projects of the RCR Workshop was the Restoration of the Vallbona Monastery garden, which is at present abandoned. The design strategy involved: a) the reactivation of the water circulation throughout the garden in a traditional way, b) strategically planting dense vegetation on the upper level to hide the back of the houses and visually connect with the mountain, c) the organisation of the agricultural area in the three lower levels, and d) the design of a shady walk incorporating the existing historical pergola.