"Freeze" is an English word
that means: stay still, don't move.
This word is dear to me,
because it is linked to awakening.
In fact, I want to speak of awakening
as something necessary
to shake our inertia, our inaction away.
And it is important to move right now
because an unexpected,
risky future awaits us.
Movement is fundamental
to reconsider these risks
in a positive way.
Sure, I talk about it
from my point of view.
As an architect, I have to understand
what my role is within this change,
how I can intervene,
and above all the importance
of architects and architecture
within this context.
The context we are talking about
is climate change.
A change that entails,
not just a new, different scenario,
but rather an ever changing one,
second by second,
over the next hundreds,
maybe thousands of years.
What about architecture?
Every time I talk about this topic,
the question becomes,
Yes, this is a political issue
that's up to decision makers,
probably corporate CEOs,
industrial policies and the economy.
As you can see on this graph,
the reality is not exactly like that.
Architects play a fundamental role.
If we talk about CO2,
we see that probably, indeed certainly,
CO2 emissions are largely
caused by buildings.
If we also consider the transport system
and combine the two together,
considering how the city shape
affects the transport system,
we will see that the city itself
is the main cause of CO2 emissions.
The role of the architect
is therefore important, if not pivotal.
In fact, we also know
what ingredients are needed
to meet this need.
Research helps us
so we know that these cities
are more resilient,
they can adapt to this change more easily,
and this change comes
with extreme climate changes.
So cities need to adapt
to these extreme climate changes.
The second aspect is compactness.
We have to expect increasingly
dense and compact cities
because the availability of resources
is increasingly limited;
it's up to the productive land.
The larger the size of the city,
the greater the availability
of productive land.
This leads me to conclude,
aware as I am of the population growth,
if we don't want to get
to what the Portsmouth research centre
calls the "impossible equation",
we will have to consider a new element,
which is the key element
for awakening, and it's creativity.
That's why we talk about radical Concept,
we talk about vision,
the ability to see the world
with different eyes.
This doesn't actually mean
we just talk about the future
and no longer have to look at the past.
Before the industrial revolution,
we are aware of that,
some of these models
had already been applied.
Venice is clearly a radical city,
a visionary city,
but we could also look to other models
such as Shibam, in Yemen,
a city that on every profile
meets our climate needs
in the desert area.
An ultra-compact city
that withstands the hot desert winds.
It has this white upper surface
with high albedo
that allows a drastic reduction
in the Heat Island Effect,
something that is often talked about
as if it was a problem
ancestors weren't aware of.
Of course,
even this idea of being visionary
is not new per se.
We know there was a historical period
when vision has been decisive,
and it has been decisive
precisely for that kind of ability
to see the world in a radical way
that came from the world
of architecture, or art.
I'm referring to the Renaissance.
What does the Renaissance have to do
with today's climate crisis?
Because the crisis of the 14th century
had characteristics
that closely match the current one:
a reduction in resources,
a population that was no longer able
to access these resources,
climate change in the opposite direction,
i.e. a mini ice age.
And last but not least,
the problem related to the fact
that a disease, the black death,
was somehow the reason
why society as a whole
took a different shape,
somehow upholstering
economies and societies.
This is important because, obviously,
the reference to the first two factors
is quite immediate,
but the reference to health
is just as important,
while not self-evident.
We know that climate change
will be a major cause of disease
in the next twenty years.
People like Leonardo, a visionary,
people who are able to see the world
with new, different eyes,
without the mental frames
that affected us all,
is fundamental.
How can we nurture today
a creative ability
that leads us to awaken?
I have my personal idea.
It comes from the fact,
I am also an educator.
This can be done through education,
thanks to the fact
that young people and students
are not conditioned like us dinosaurs
by a worldview
that is somehow determined
by the last centuries of history.
So our job is precisely
to try and ignite in them
the ability to be creative, inventive,
even radical and extreme.
Here we see a series of works
done by students and collaborators
of my Media Hub research centre
who are, as well as students,
also real researchers.
This is Liam Stumbles in this example.
He figured out a city
that is revolutionised
by the idea of eliminating
car traffic altogether,
and reusing the stuff
our highways are made of
to rebuild a new urban fabric.
Here we see the example
of the city of Auckland
and the consequences for this city:
spaces originally intended for motorways
become parks and structures
that can be used
by the whole city population.
We see that the system
tries to take advantage
of state-of-the-art technologies,
such as the use of drones,
and the so-called swarm behavior,
the ability of drones to move in swarms.
And we see that the possibility
of changing the performance of the city
gets critical in this line of thought.
Another example is to use botany
as an unrban revolution tool;
the ecological systems that arise
from plants' genetic modification.
Or to draw a city,
as in the case of Naim Mukif,
assuming that the city must be drawn
not only on human flows,
on those that are the movements
of people and their needs,
but also on that of bees -
just today it has been declared
that bees are the planet's
most important animals.
Or we can use cellular stuff of this type,
we can understand how it expands,
and infer from that
what the rearrangement tendencies
of these organisms are.
And we can also understand,
at the same time,
how we can directly use this material
as a building material.
In this case we use it as a brise soleil,
as a possibility to make
the windows more opaque,
by controlling the development.
Or an extreme like this,
designed by Joyce Kwan,
which is the transformation of cities
in a totally organic solution.
Here we see a project
by Michael Brewster and Bevin Liang,
focused on the chance
of including automation
and robotics in the city.
This technology allows the city
to be resilient,
meaning that the ability to adapt
precisely depends on the city's
robotic equipment.
It's not just about
speculative elaborations,
it's also about making responsive models,
as in this case, using an Arduino,
to these project hypotheses,
to the last city in this series
that I'd like to show you,
which is a city in Antarctica
with extreme conditions.
What we are talking about here
is the possibility of using
our planet's extreme climate conditions
as resources,
obviously limiting our carbon footprint.
However, these extreme areas
generate usable resources.
Here we see examples
of this city system, station system
which are a form
of colonisation of Antarctica.
We see that, in some way,
this system is very similar
to that of oil platforms
but its goal is completely different:
harness marine movements, for example,
and recreate a habitat
that promotes a good relationship
between humans and animals.
Here we see how a relationship
is somehow created with the oceanic fauna.
Now the typical question,
when I talk about these things, is:
What's the cost for transition?
The question is not a random one,
because it is seemingly a rhetorical one.
Many people say, a change
would cost a hell of a lot.
After all, our society
is based on fossil fuels,
and maintaining the status quo,
in many people's opinion,
is certainly a cheaper strategy.
The answer is no.
By "No", I mean that transition
is cheaper than the status quo.
We do not have time to elaborate here,
but a few images are enough
to understand why that's not the case.
Here is a state-of-the-art oil platform
that digs, sucks
the last drops of blood from our planet,
from the depths of the ocean
with irreversible damage to biodiversity.
The second objection
is about the cities I showed you.
If you asked, I am convinced
more than half of you
would hold the point,
these are dystopian visions,
and many among you
have already said to your neighbour:
"Oh yes, interesting, maybe - hopefully -
but I'd never want to live there".
This is interesting,
because it is probably correct to say
"I would never want to live there".
But what is dystopia,
if not also a condition
of unfamiliarity with a certain condition.
Because our natural condition is this:
we don't live in country houses
with a backyard.
We live in this conditions.
80% of the world's population
already lives like this today,
and probably much more so in future.
Either the left or the right one, 50 / 50.
Are we sure that this condition
is not a dystopian condition,
or it just so happens,
our feeling of comfort
with the environment we live in
is only related to familiarity
with this environment?
This is a question
I'd rather not to answer.
You probably already understood
that those cities I took as examples
try to say one very precise thing,
that is, to stimulate this discussion.
It would come handy for me
to show you much more reassuring models.
I'd wrap up saying that awakening,
in my point of view,
asks to see the world
from a completely different perspective.
I was lucky in my life:
for work and research,
I was able to move to New Zealand
and this allowed me
to actually see the world
from as far as possible from my country,
and from the most
different perspective also.
From the South Pacific,
and in particular from a fauna,
from an environmental context
that's so different from ours,
even if it is said that 2.000 years ago,
even before the Roman Empire,
New Zealand looked very much like Italy.
What particularly strikes me
about New Zealand
is the biodiversity
and the characteristics of the fauna.
New Zealand, mind you,
is a place where humans, Maori,
didn't get until 1200-1300,
and in 1700 we Westerners
came to colonise it.
So a natural habitat thrived
that's extremely different
from our usual one.
The kakapo, in my opinion,
is an animal that somewhat
represents this condition.
Kakapos don't fly,
despite being large parrots.
When it has to reproduce
it chooses one of the dozens of volcanoes
that are found for example in Auckland -
hundreds, maybe thousands
are all across New Zealand,
and goes to the top of this hill.
Once at the top of this hill,
it starts screaming.
This is his way of attracting his partner,
who in turn climbs this hill to mate.
Now, I always think about this condition
because I come from Tuscany,
and I imagine a wild boar
climbing up a hill and screaming.
I don't know how long it would take
before a hunter goes and takes the dinner,
hinted at by this signal.
Another very interesting aspect
is that at a certain point in his life
the kakapo met humanity,
And what the kakapo did,
when he met man for the first time,
was freezing: he stopped, he got stuck,
hoping that the hunter
would not detect him,
hoping to trick him into thinking
the kakapo was actually a tree or a stone.
Just imagine how successful
this strategy turned out to be,
and the risks of extinction
the kakapo still faces today.
And that's my bottom line:
basically, we are the kakapo today,
And I hope that's a consideration
that you will share with me.
(Applause)