Mario Cucinella

Design your sustainability

The future: a zero-options place dedicated to a new relationship with nature
We believed it, we tried for two centuries to build the city of the modern man, we thought we would build a better world, with the simple and clear illusion of technology, where everything can be artificially controlled: light, air conditioning, weather-resistant curtain walls perfectly produced by the industry, work spaces and conditions not considering the various cultures. We thought that the fight against nature was a project of achievement, of establishment of our ability to create new places for the human being. But why did we sell out cultural and environmental wellness models for this complex global trickery?
Today’s global powers, emerging countries, are frantically chasing a ghost, thinking that it’s enough to construct buildings to make a city. Nothing could be more naive: it is the invisible part what creates a city, the murmurs, loves, memories, names of people. We come from a culture of huge industrial transformation that generated, on the one hand, technology, development and an improvement in the quality of life, but that after many years has called us to account for our social and environmental responsibilities, with global consequences on our survival. 
Maybe right now we need to imagine an ideal city of the future that this time should not only be a dream, a design, but should become something to believe in. In a time of so high environmental fragility we shouldn’t believe lies, which doesn’t seem to take much to do, just a few trees to save ourselves. We need to tell ourselves what dream we want to make true, a city where we find a new relationship with nature and for once, after centuries in which the human being has been at the centre of the universe, so well-represented by Rivera’s mural in Mexico City, man will be part of a big ecosystem where the ideal city starts again interacting with nature.
Changing now means rethinking some key aspects of our relationship with technology, our relationships with different environments, rebuilding recognisable landscapes and listening to citizens: a city is made with others. We won’t manage to change anything if we don’t change the foundations of our relationships and habits and we won’t give architecture its true dignity. The extreme paradox is dealing with a kind of sustainability that is most of the times an aesthetic one and not with the quality of human relationships, loyalty, trust and respect for the environment.

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Mario Cucinella is an architect particularly known for his research on environmental sustainability of buildings. Among his main projects are Sino Italian Ecological Building (SIEEB) in Beijing and the Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies in Ningbo (China). With the aim of developing and spreading the principles of an architecture oriented towards the respect for the environment, in 2012 he founded Building Green Futures, a non-profit organisation combining environmental research and technology.
MCA (Mario Cucinella Architects) currently involves professionals with multiple skills, from architecture to engineering, from urban and territorial planning to industrial design: mission of the studio is to develop low environmental impact projects in a constant challenge to the most careful use of energy.
In 2017 the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities appointed him curator of the Italian Pavillion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2018, that Cucinella entitled Arcipelago Italia. 

SOS School of Sustainability is a creative laboratory born in collaboration with Mario Cucinella Architects whose training process is based on the integration between education, research and professional practice.
SOS School of Sustainability was born with the purpose of training new professional figures able to face the global challenges of our time thanks to multidisciplinary skills gained through the collaboration with international industrial, professional and institutional partners.
Buildings and urban spaces designed to meet needs in harmony with the climate, respecting local cultures and communities and capable of generating value at every stage of the process are some of the issues tackled by the young professionals taking part in the programme, that look at sustainability as a tool to rebuild a solidarity-based pact between man and nature. The programme promotes a vision for the Future that is fully consistent with the theme of Brera Design District and with the crucial role that design and architecture can play in building spaces able to answer to the changes of our time, putting Sustainability at the centre of this change for a revolution of the design and architecture professions. 

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Where:
Mario Cucinella Architects
℅ Iris Ceramic Group
Via Eugenio Balzan ang. Via San Marco

Mario Cucinella Design
Building Object
Via Varese, 12

email: info@mcarchitects.it
sito web: www.mcarchitects.it
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