The Association, whose aim is to promote the creation and development of artistic institutions dedicated to the specific theme of the relationship between art and nature, was founded in 2002 in Turin, due to the initiative of the artist Piero Gilardi.   The Associations's foremost commitment, in these first few years of activity, concerns the creation of the Park of Living Art, Contemporary Art Center, in Turin. As well as this disposition of planning and promotion, there's also the investigation, research and theoretical elaboration regarding the problems of contemporary art parks as "interactive museums in nature".

The Association unites artists, architects, art critics and cultural workers motivated to elaborate the specific aesthetic lode of the "art of the living", in order to achieve innovative "museum-like" solutions and interdisciplinary, and especially participative, artistic methodologies. The seed for the birth of this interdisciplinary community can be recognized in a series of cultural phenomena that took place in the second half of the 20^th century, reaching a crucial maturation at the turn of this new century, from the contamination between art and life to the emergence of the landscape and natural environment as an expressive and symbolic architectural and artistic medium; from the expansion of the functional and correlative significance of artistic practices to the intersection of the arts with techno-science, up to today's hybridization with Bio Art's logic of the living. Based on these premises, the synergy of operative planning is developed between the roles of the architect, the curator, the artist, the scientic researcher and the educator. The methodology of team work is fundamental, as is the attitude of partnership with the enterprising groups and artistic communities of the vast, far-reaching international network of art/nature centers and art parks.   

The Association's activities are characterized by an interactive approach extending to all levels: from that of supporting the artists' process of creativity and its achievement, to accompanying the public in experimentation with the creative resources of the "living" medium and in comprehending the cognitive means necessary for interpreting nature's codes and forms.  In the complexity of its activities, aside from its artistic institutive ends, and in virtue of its cultural-anthropological register, the Association develops intrinsic dynamic social action for broadening the field of creativity, beyond its canonical confines, so that ecological responsibility may become firmly radicated in our awareness.