“We need a new covenant between urban spaces and nature, even more so in the post-pandemic world we will have to rebuild together. In the city-forests of the future, beauty and utility coexist: we are glad to participate through this exhibition in the European Sustainable Development Week 2020” (Ambassador Luigi Mattiolo)
Exhibition by Stefano Boeri Architetti
in collaboration with the Italian Embassy in Berlin and CLB Berlin
Address: CLB Berlin, Prinzenstraße 84.2, 10969 Berlin
Opening hours: 10.-27.09.20, daily from 10.00am to 08.00pm
In cooperation with the Italian Embassy Berlin, CLB Berlin presents an exhibition by Stefano Boeri Architetti. Internationally outstanding architecture and urban development projects are shown, which aim at a lively and future-oriented interaction between city and nature. The exhibition will display some current projects by Stefano Boeri Architetti around the world. The construction of Vertical Forests (a new generation of high-rise urban buildings completely covered by the leaves of trees and plants), the design of self-sufficient neighbourhoods – and the planning of Smart Forest Cities – confirm how architects and urban planners can contribute to bringing living nature back to the city and increasing urban biodiversity.
Worldwide, the Covid-19 pandemic has unveiled an irreversible awareness of the fragility of humankind. We have discovered ourselves fragile in our technocratic presumptions of dominance over nature, suddenly revealed to be damaging to ourselves. We have recognized ourselves as fragile in our intellectual capacity for prediction, which turned out to be incapable of predicting an infection that simply represents the last one in a chain of infections from a virus. And now we must accept and work on this unveiled and, in many ways, unexpected “fragility” as an opportunity to critically rethink a different way of inhabiting the planet, the cities, the spaces of everyday life.
Today, every architect is entitled to contribute to a different future, by accelerating trends already underway and by transforming architecture into a sphere of life. The current situation is urging us to rethink the concept of urban intensity, in the direction of a new covenant between cities, surrounding suburban areas and living nature.
Milan, heavily affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, is undertaking a major effort towards a broader and more inclusive territorial dispersion, to be managed as an opportunity to rethink the urban dimensions, connecting metropolises and suburban areas. Renovated projects related to mobility and urban forestry are leading Milan to be one of the most ambitious urban planning scenes in Europe, by bringing kilometres of cycle paths and green areas.
In light of the effects of climate change and the current pandemics, the Green Obsession Exhibition suggests a possible way forward, giving voice to the multiple processes necessary for this transition.
The exhibition is part of the Embassy of Italy’s initiatives for the European Sustainable Development Week hosted by the German Foreign Office which will take place from 21st – 27th September. On 25th September a further talk (in Webinar format) on open and green spaces in cities will follow with Prof. Stefano Boeri and Gillian Dick (Manager of Spatial Planning – Research & Development Team within the Development Plan Group at Glasgow City Council), amongst others.
Both the exhibition and the webinar are among the initiatives promoted by this Embassy as part of the annual Sustainable Development Festival, Italy’s largest campaign dedicated to the 2030 Agenda, with the aim to raise awareness and mobilise citizens, businesses, associations and institutions on the issues of economic, social and environmental sustainability, and to bring about cultural and political change that will enable Italy to implement the UN Agenda 2030 and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The Festival is organized by the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development (ASviS) every year since 2017 as platform to foster dialogue and share best practices.
All regulations in place at the time due to Covid-19 will be respected. Please check information ahead of your visit HERE.
“We must think of thoroughly seize the power of these pandemic and climatic tragedies, and try to think of a different way of living natural landscapes, countryside, urban and everyday spaces. We are nowadays facing two scenarios. A dystopian one, which sees humanity unable to drastically reverse global warming, and for this reason lands on Mars with self-sufficient colonies. Or an optimistic one, in which our species find the strength to change course and establish a way of sustainable living. A new world in which all cities are designed to accommodate a new alliance between green ecosystems, living nature and artificial spaces. An effective opportunity to define new housing standards in which trees are considered as inhabitants both of cities and architecture, equal to humans. The real challenge is to put more attention to greenery, to unpolluted air, to wooden regions, to biodiversity and forests for a better Planet” (Prof. Stefano Boeri)
