Italian architect Mario Cucinella discusses his sustainable design practice and reveals that learning from small-scale community projects is key to repairing the relationship between nature and our built environment
If there is one topic architects have on their minds this year, it is, without a doubt, sustainability. Architecture and design festivals worldwide have reinforced their efforts to spotlight climate change and sustainable building practices, encouraging firms to adopt more environmentally friendly methods in their various design and construction projects.
It is in this context that we encountered Mario Cucinella’s exhibition at the World Architecture Festival (WAF) in November last year. Titled The Future is a Journey to the Past, it presented a timeline of sustainable building practices, ranging from antiquity to the present. Sponsored by Italian luxury bath and kitchen fittings manufacturer Gessi, which champions fair and sustainable manufacturing, careful material use and water-saving endeavours, it also accentuated the significant cultural events that have impacted our environmental awareness throughout history.
What set this exhibition apart from other sustainability initiatives is Cucinella’s distinct focus on vernacular, ground-up architecture, accompanied by a keen interest in reframing it as a human need rather than an economically driven investment. In the architect’s eyes, the key to a sustainable future lies in reconfiguring how we build, and repairing the relationship between the built environment and the natural world.
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While there is an abundance of new technologies and futuristic building materials that could present innovative solutions to climate change, Cucinella’s exhibition looks to the past for inspiration instead. As the introduction puts it, new building solutions “often require expensive and complex stratagems. However, a journey into the past reveals how, in eras when sustainable thinking was a necessity, humans created ingenious practical solutions that we still have much to learn from.”
This philosophy has accompanied Cucinella since the beginning of his architectural career, struck by the relationship between material, climate and place. “I was fascinated by the variety and complexity of architecture around the world, especially vernacular architecture,” he tells us. “I think we only lost this kind of approach [to building] in the last century, but it’s always been there. We need to come back to our roots.”
Cucinella believes that our “friendship” with the natural world is impaired, but not that humanity and nature are wholly incompatible. Instead, finding a better way to build should be at the forefront of our sustainability efforts, to rebuild a healthy relationship with the natural world. “We must find this friendship again because we need housing, museums and schools,” he explains. “So, there [has to be] another way to build.”
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