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Concept 2021

Concept

More than ever, it is necessary to find the pattern that connects. The pattern that connects our actions for the health of the Planet, and for the health of all humans.

We need to build up an idea of preservation and resilience that must be inclusive both socially and ecologically. Humans matter, our life matters, and this requires a shift in the way we inhabit and use this Planet.

A somehow marauding attitude orients the anthropic actions mainly towards the economic profitability, with little regard to the use of the space and landscape issues.

A change in the paradigm shift is needed, from a merely technical perspective to a more complex and inclusive one. This shift change would transform the energy transitions actions into opportunities for infrastructuring the landscape, adding benefits for the local communities. However, in order to succeed a methodological effort towards a new ecological approach is needed.

In priority, the technical and disciplinary rigidity, which considers the project as the reply to a singular specific need, should be overcome in favor of a domain allowing the flexibility to include other non-specific requirements, i.e. the ones of the human, of the fauna and flora communities and of the ecosystems inhabiting and occupying the landscape. Doing so means overcoming the common way of thinking, by finding the language of landscape – which is made of spatial, functional and perceptual patterns – in order to become able to connect to what is invisible, to support what is connected – and the anthropic action risks to disconnect, to connect what is disconnected. This implies using new evocative words, in order to experiment with the flexibility that Gregory Bateson defines as the not occupied change potential. It also implies crossing the disciplinary borders, and going back and forth between what is visible and what is invisible, what is apparent and what is not apparent, and looking for connections. New trans-disciplinary metrics  are required for the orientation of the design as well as for assessing the variegated and diverse performances of the solar photovoltaic systems to give them the ability of becoming “solar landscapes that connect”.

Finally, it is not only a matter of methodology; it is much more. It is the urgent, and unconditional call for spirituality, and for a poetic mind, which would be able to recognize, respect, and support the beauty that nature offers for free. No methodology, no number, in fact, can be sufficient alone, as there is no technical layout for beauty.

Alessandra Scognamiglio, ENEA

Solar Mountain by Nuru Karim and Anuj Modi uses solar photovoltaic, and recycled materials to contribute 300 MWh of electricity per year and interactive spaces for play and exercise. A top ten submission to the LAGI 2020 Fly Ranch Design Challenge.

LAGI – Beyond the wave

Organizers

ENEA, concept and programme
www.enea.it

ETA-Florence, organisation and promotion
www.etaflorence.it

 

Chairpersons

Alessandra Scognamiglio
ENEA

Heinz Ossenbrink
Former European Commission, Joint Research Center