Nature as an architectural element in SITE’s work

Abstract

In these last decades of climate change effects becoming more evident, there is a need for a radical cultural change for which the population of the planet must be prepared.

In this activity that promises to be a vast educational process, which should see all of us person-ally involved as researchers of the anthropized landscape, it is useful to reflect on the recent results obtained with the “Eco-Planning” projects aimed at facilitating the natural regeneration of habitats, but also to retrace the pioneering work of architectural design professionals who in the past, when the environmental emergency was not yet certified, in their professional activity were sensitive to the impact on nature of building activity and the correlations between the manufactured product and the human psycho-physical well-being.

In the text, reference is made to projects that originated from virtuous processes in which nature is one of the elements of the architectural composition and, like the other components, contributes to defining a new creative domain where playful, humorous, self-mocking content and the plant world find their growing space. This is a trend of design research based on the principles of Architectural Psychology, the results of which are artefacts transfigured into a ‘poetic’ and ‘magical’ vision, true examples of ‘environ-mental art’. In particular, we focus our critical thinking in some of the solutions drawn up by the SITE studio as these appear to us as qualified examples from which to begin a journey aimed at changing the status quo of what, with primitive specifications, we define as human shelter.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20365/disegnarecon.33.2024.17