Architect Mario Cucinella, founder of Building Green Futures, promotes sustainable development through green architecture and urban regeneration.
When it comes to homes of the future, no one is better placed than an internationally renowned architect like Mario Cucinella to illustrate the ideal way of living — in the spirit of the highest aspirations to beauty and sustainability. An architect and founder of Building Green Futures, a non-profit organisation that promotes sustainable development through green architecture and urban regeneration, Cucinella also drafted the Guidelines sustainable solutions. Design, construction, dismantling and reuse, a set of guidelines for the adoption of sustainable solutions for the structures at Expo Milano 2015. His studio MCA –Mario Cucinella Architects– is based in Bologna and Paris, where we had the opportunity to explore his vision of the home, the rules to follow, his profession, ethics and beauty.
Today you are the most authoritative reference in Italy for ecological, sustainable, environmentally responsible architecture. How did you get there?
Sustainability is part of my story — I started out believing that the relationship between architecture and the environment was part of our history. In the nineties I didn't let myself be influenced by architecture that lacked these qualities. I remained somewhat conservative from that point of view, faithful to what I considered a founding element of our professional work. I also paid a price for that position: at a time when sustainable architecture wasn't attracting much attention, we didn't take part in the orgy of those nineties and two-thousands. But I consistently followed this path because I believe this centuries-old relationship between architecture and the environment will never end — in the sense that it is one of the founding themes of architecture from its very origins. You cannot separate the themes of wellbeing and good living that a building must offer from a purely aesthetic vision of architecture. What interests me is not claiming primacy on this subject, but the fact that having worked on it and believed in it has built up a wealth of expertise in the method and in the ethical and practical approach to working on architecture, and that is now recognised. That is the reason we are here today and moving forward.
The Guidelines Sustainable Solutions — instructions for the construction and dismantling of the pavilions for Expo 2015 in Milan — were decidedly innovative. Can you explain why?
They had never been produced at any previous Expo. It was interesting, first of all, that the issue had been raised at all. The weak point of those guidelines is that they needed to be the subject of a deep relationship with the pavilions regarding material reuse, temporariness and efficiency. We provided a series of recommendations that I believe were useful, which had nothing to do with architecture as such, but with method. I don't know how much it was actually verified that things were truly done that way. They were good practices that were not mandatory — which is something of an oxymoron!
Was no assessment carried out on how widely they were applied and how effective they proved?
The Politecnico di Milano did one, but it would have been important for us too to be able to give a judgement on how far things had been followed or not. It was fundamental that the pavilions be dismantled and sold off in parts, avoiding indiscriminate demolitions, and that emissions and energy consumption also be assessed. I am glad that these principles were associated with the pavilions, because they certainly generated cross-pollination and everyone took something of these principles home with them.
Sustainability and respect for the environment are values that are gradually spreading throughout Italy. What rules do you consider absolutely essential when approaching a sustainable architecture project?
When approaching any architecture project, something I consider absolutely essential is carrying out an analysis of climate data. Very often architects don't even know the orientation of their building, or where the wind comes from. That is part of the culture of the nineties and two-thousands, in which architecture was predominantly an aesthetic matter — and which also produced some dramatic results. An attitude towards sustainability means being aware of the responsibility that comes with designing a building. Climate analyses are fundamental; they are elements that can guide empathic design — the better you know the place and its characteristics, the greater the awareness. Then there are technical rules to follow regarding lighting design, to ensure the building achieves zero energy. If you are designing today, you have to think about the future of architecture. What saddens me most is that architecture is often seen as an almost artistic, highly communicative expression in which the aesthetic aspect prevails. But buildings have to address far more important issues in terms of emissions and energy savings — which are not, however, ends in themselves. It is not about finding the magic number, but about doing something to live better, about building buildings that help everyone live better, that pollute little — because, within the product supply chain, they are responsible for the emissions they produce and for the quality of life of the people who live in them. All elements that contribute to defining sustainability.
Is it difficult to be an architect today?
We are heading in a direction where our work is becoming increasingly difficult, because to practise it, having an aesthetic vision is no longer enough: people are well and truly tired of seeing crooked buildings, banana-shaped buildings, slightly eccentric ones. You ask yourself: but why? Questions of authenticity arise too — why a building is made one way or another. Buildings have to work, and those are the founding elements; they have to be beautiful places to live in. So awareness means that the architect's range of competencies is growing — they have to meet standards and comply with laws that didn't exist ten years ago. These are competencies I cannot simply "buy", as some people think: I'll buy in the expertise of the engineer, the ecologist, the sociologist. In my work I have to be a little like Woody Allen's Zelig: partly disguised as an engineer, partly as an environmentalist, I have to talk about sociology and participation, and design architecture. The whole set of values is part of your way of thinking about architecture, of your vision. And the same applies to the green theme — everyone is rushing into green architecture, but many have not understood that it is not just an aesthetic or fashionable value; it is a founding value. Aesthetics becomes a form of representation of that ethics. Contrary to what a Biennale some years ago proclaimed with "Less esthetics more ethics" — at a time when architecture was purely aesthetic and not ethical — the transition today is precisely about awareness of responsibility. Aesthetics is a concept that changes over time. For me today, aesthetics, beauty, is also what you cannot see: the code for reading something beautiful is also that behind it there is something you don't see — such as CO2 emission savings. I like that building because I know it also has an ethical content; I give it value, as I would any product, like yoghurt: I buy that one because I know that behind it there is a supply chain attentive to what is good and beautiful, and so I attribute to it an aesthetic value that stems from its ethical dimension.
How do you think the concept of living will transform or evolve in the future?
We are working on several residential projects, such as the 100K low-cost house. The master plan for these projects is deeply connected to certain environmental elements that guide the form and the choice of materials. We also define guidelines: since we won't be overseeing the entire project, we give people the indications to follow in order to achieve the sustainability goals of the dwelling. I have never, on the other hand, dealt with the design of private homes or interiors — that's not my work and I don't want to venture into that field. I've formed this idea: since a home is something of a representation of the people who live in it, I don't see why they should call an architect to represent themselves, above all through interior design choices. People have their own ideas and it's right that they express them through their own ambitions and desires: if someone wants a fake leopard-print sofa in their home, it's right that they put one there.
What is your relationship with home automation, smart home technology, the internet of things, objects that communicate and interact with people?
Home automation is often complicated: the fact that a blind opens or closes automatically strikes me as an enormous effort that also prevents you from learning how to manage a home. Certain aspects seem a bit extreme to me. What I do find interesting, on the other hand, is having tools that engage in a dialogue with you because they can make the system more efficient: I'm thinking of the washing machine that starts when energy costs less, the fridge that tells you what to buy at the right time, objects that are part of an information network and help you make the right choices. I find this development of digital technology, with elements that communicate with one another, very interesting. We're still at a somewhat primitive stage, at the beginning of the digital era, but these are all tools that are evolving.
What is your home like, and what is your relationship with its spaces?
I lived in a flat for many years and found it very frustrating. When you ask people: "how do you imagine your home?" or "what kind of home would you like to live in?", no one ever thinks to say "two bedrooms, a kitchenette, a bathroom and a corridor." Obviously no one says that. Perhaps if you have an intense social life you want a home where the living room is far more important than everything else, or if you're a great cook, the kitchen is the most important space in the dwelling. I "endured" various homes and then finally found a large space — a loft in a warehouse divided into three units, one of which is mine — where I decided how to manage my space: there was no typological subdivision — a terrifying word! — and so today I have a home with no walls, as if it were a theatre stage. There's the kitchen counter, the living area, all together. I don't like divisions. There are bedrooms too, but they're all transparent. I like lying in bed and seeing the light and the rest of the house. I found a sort of representation of what living means to me through an unconventional space. Everyone should be able to fulfil their own needs by manipulating the space around them. This principle has always been denied, because there have been diligent regulators who established what the ideal surface area of a bedroom is and the rules for every space in the home. It is instead the way in which I live that defines the space. Or it should. And not the space that forces me to live in a certain way. Developers haven't understood this yet. They cry poverty because their residential model is by now so disconnected from reality that nobody wants it any more. And they don't pause to reflect from a sociological standpoint to understand how families are organised today and how they have changed. Perhaps they think that at some point people will return to the seventies-style home model, with the kitchenette, the dining room, the larder, the corridor and so on. It is a model that reality and society have completely left behind. Different social and cultural strata have different expressions. The fact is that the construction world has not intercepted the transformations in the family model and has not invested a single euro in understanding the world it operates in.
From the housing observatory, this picture is fairly clear: perhaps what's missing is more direct communication capable of reaching the construction world as well?
Yes, they don't read; they keep thinking they can carry on doing what they know how to do, but that leads nowhere. The paradox is that construction is at a standstill, yet there are six million Italians who don't have a home and would like one. But the homes aren't there — what's needed is a more flexible approach to housing, which doesn't exist. Young people struggle to find housing, and it's just as well that Italy has a family structure that contains this problem. In the Netherlands, where young people leave home at sixteen, you simply cannot fail to intercept this phenomenon and build opportunities around it. Here, on the other hand, this kind of analysis isn't being done.
The housing observatory also reveals a desire for a strong indoor-outdoor relationship with nature, with natural elements integrated into the home. What is the relationship with greenery like in your own home?
Since my home was once a workshop, it has large glass windows. It's on the outskirts of Bologna, with the hills in front of it. We have a very urban courtyard and we spend part of our lives outdoors. People would like to have terraces where they can be outside, which also means being in the public space. On this topic too we have building regulations that work against our desire to live. We have built bureaucratic machines for living. There is a paradox: instead of adapting the rules to a changing society, the rules try to condition society's change. This cannot work — even local councils, which invest time and paper inventing the most absurd regulations for housing, need to understand this.
Are you optimistic that in the near future there could be a change in housing regulations in our country?
This country has decided that one of its main activities is producing decrees, laws and regulations, also to justify a machine that costs a disproportionate sum. On the other side, there is a world that is asking for fewer rules and more flexibility. Every year, instead, a new urban planning directive is produced, new building regulations, a different municipal by-law that differs from that of the town fifty kilometres away. All these people feed and justify themselves by creating this infernal system for everyone, including themselves!
Looking at the reconstruction of the earthquake-stricken areas in Abruzzo and the Marche, for example, the paradox is that having produced so much regulatory apparatus, today they have to issue decrees to annul what they have done, and despite this they still cannot grasp that with ordinary laws you cannot deal with an extraordinary event like an earthquake. One has to wonder where common sense has gone. What is certain is that our bureaucracy, built with a great deal of academic rigour, often by people who don't even know the territory particularly well, does not respond to the needs of the people. I don't think there is any hope with this type of culture.
So what must be done?
The time has come for a major change, and this will happen because people will start to demand change. It won't be politics that brings it about — politics is not capable of interpreting what is new — but the people, as they have already begun to do with the temporary use of spaces. Gradually the system will have to answer to these demands coming from the grassroots. The role of all of us is important in making it understood that change is needed.