Nowadays, Italy is probably most famous for fine fashion, football and food. The mere mention of the Mediterranean peninsula conjures up images of open-air cafés set amidst cobblestone piazzas and starry-eyed lovers bent on romantic liaisons.
Milan in particular evokes images of ridiculously attractive models stalking catwalks practicing faces of brooding intensity. Milan is stylistic brilliance. Milan is retail bliss. Milan is haute couture.
Relatively speaking, Milan is not generally considered a hotbed of Italian architecture. Rome? Of course. Florence? Definitely. Venice? Absolutely. Milan? Not so much...until now.
Upon arriving at Milan’s 2nd Edition of the Milano Architettura Design Edilizia (MADEexpo), held from February 4-7, 2009, it quickly became clear that Italy’s fashion capital, long overshadowed by its more architecturally endowed sister cities, has officially announced its presence on the world’s architecture stage.
Italy’s foremost international trade show for building and architecture, the MADEexpo showcased an extraordinary and comprehensive range of products and technologies for building, renovation and redevelopment.
Massive in scale and scope, MADEexpo boasted separate halls for each of the following industry subsections: structures/construction systems/materials, building envelope, interior architecture, installations/renewable energy, construction supply chain planning, construction IT, worksite equipment/technologies and sports facilities/fitness/urban finishings.
The four-day event saw 200,126 visitors from 118 different countries.
For readers more familiar with the Cityscape brand of architecture/development exhibition these numbers put MADEexpo into perspective: Cityscapes Abu Dhabi and Dubai both reported record turnouts in 2008, the total number of visitors to those shows were 48,354 and 51,885 respectively. In four days, the Milan event attracted double what the UAE Cityscapes get in five days.
Biomimicry and Eco-design
Sustainability, energy efficiency, safety. As one might have expected, these were the buzzwords of the event and were the main issues around which MADEexpo and its 100+ conferences revolved. Among the most popular and highly-attended conference was CITYFUTURES; an academic conference, jointly organized by MADEexpo and the Italian Organization of Architectural Technology during which engineers, scientists, administrators and architects presented challenges and solutions for building cities of the future.
Of particular interest were presentations given by Denise DeLuca (Biomimicry Institute) entitled “Biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature” and Alexandros N. Tombazis (UNESCO/UIA & PLEA member) entitled “Eco-technologies in architectural design: Is ecological design something different?”
DeLuca’s message was simple: “Organisms in nature face the same challenges humans face, but they meet them sustainably.” Using this rationale, DeLuca challenged her audience to use nature to solve the problems of the built environment.
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