The birth of a new word, especially a fashionable one, always generates some simplification and diffidence. So a brief overview is in order to clarify the importance of the topic. A design opportunity that goes beyond the simple, although increasingly necessary, desire to better our relationship with the environment.
The best way to explain it is to take nature as an example, for instance a tree that renews and regenerates itself through its fruits, feeding itself without weighing on the environment and its resources.
The application of this simple logical process can result in beautiful and functional solutions with extraordinary savings in costs, materials, and energy. This is why world-famous designers, architecture studios and the most interesting furnishing firms have been investing for years and have now gone beyond the experimental phase, as have the prestigious government and academic institutions involved world-wide in creativity and new discoveries.
Whether it be using recycled materials such as plastics, wood or discarded metals, or more noble materials produced directly from nature, there are many solutions available. And beyond any considerations of style in furnishing a living or working space, they are the most economically and structurally adequate, and the most aesthetically beautiful and efficient solutions for the entire process of design, set-up and construction of any new build, renovation or refurbishment. Especially when every element is ‘naturally’ involved: be it a natural dye, type of lighting, or more structural and fundamental elements of our living, productive, or working spaces.
And everything in a contemporary style that is also – among the many challenges of architecture in re-purposing and conserving works of the past – attentive to traditional practices and materials, increasingly at zero km. A search for beauty and functionality that remains key, where, far from posing a limit, respect and protection of the environment presents an opportunity.

by Ilenia Girolami