RIBA+VitrA: Rethink Sustainability with Mario Cucinella

The 2024 RIBA+VitrA ‘Challenge: Rethink’ talks series brings together practitioners who are leading the way in challenging expectations and rethinking conventional approaches, using architecture as a catalyst for positive urban and social change.

Creative Empathy - An Exploration of Environmental Design

Our Challenge: Rethink Sustainability talk looks at the work of MCA (Mario Cucinella Architects) and its dynamic approaches to sustainability. These are witnessed in recent projects ranging from the Arpae Environmental Agency in Ferrara to a mixed use community building in a Tuscan hill town, and a new Calabrian church set beside a mountainous national park to two new buildings in Milan - a hospital with Italy’s largest emergency room and an Etruscan archaeology museum.

The talk will explore the different contexts of building and regeneration in Italy, from rural revival to the transformation of cities. The connection between the past and present is a strong theme in this discourse, discussed through a lens of environmental design as explored in Mario Cucinella’s recent book “The Future is a Journey to The Past: Ten stories about Architecture.”  

The talk will relate current projects to the themes featured in Cucinella’s book and emphasise the cultural and ethical thinking within sustainability, exploring ideas beyond pure technicality and regulations.

Our overarching theme will be the reconnection of the relationship between humans and the planet through a deep understanding of local climates. This is something Mario Cucinella Architects refer to as Creative Empathy. “The best architecture springs from a connection with all that a location has been and could be. We search for the soul of a site.” - Mario Cucinella Architects