ECO-SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE
“Sustainability, as a paradox of artifice, raises new questions: democracy towards the planet is a necessity that leads directly to the environmental issue. […] Humans consume the Earth’s capital faster than nature’s ability to regenerate. A sustainable home does not erode the planet’s bio-capacity but harmonizes with it, thus enabling it to ‘support’ it.”
Enzo Calabrese
Sustainability is now a topic that affects every sphere of our lives, and architecture cannot remain indifferent to it.
What exactly is meant by sustainable architecture?
Sustainable architecture designs and constructs buildings to limit environmental impact, with the project goals of energy efficiency, health improvement, comfort, and quality of use for inhabitants, through the integration of appropriate structures and technologies into the building.
Creating sustainable architecture means knowing how to build to meet the needs and requests of clients, taking into account natural resources, without causing irreversible damage to the environment, and harmoniously integrating into the context.
Architects now consider many different factors during their design to minimize environmental impact, such as the resources used, materials to avoid, and how to best utilize natural energies.
All this is because today’s projects aim to return to a natural dimension in the relationship between humans and architecture, trying to blend artificial elements with the surrounding environment as much as possible.
For many years, some architects have stood out for creating low environmental impact buildings, demonstrating how human art can integrate non-aggressively with nature.
Among these is Stefano Boeri, whose Vertical Forest in the Milan Business District is famous. His definition of this architectural work is emblematic and symptomatic of Boeri’s attention to eco-sustainability and biodiversity enhancement:
“it is a house for trees inhabited by humans.”
Another Italian very attentive to sustainable architecture themes is Mario Cucinella, winner of the MIPIM Award in both 2009 and 2011 for the green building category with the Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies in Ningbo and the Italian headquarters of 3M in Milan; moreover, Cucinella was the first to create a prototype of an eco-sustainable house 3D printed using only raw earth.
In 2011, the Salewa headquarters in Bolzano was built by Park Associati and Cino Zucchi: a place where nature, humans, and sustainability are strongly connected with an energy production capacity greater than that consumed!
Moving abroad, we find the Nordic countries as a great example of attention to eco-sustainability, among them the Bjarke Ingels Group in Denmark; this studio’s approach places architecture within a balance that also considers social relationships; what does this mean? Just look at the CopenHill waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen, which also has a ski slope, thus creating social integration with nature.
