{"id":961897,"date":"2026-11-12T14:44:38","date_gmt":"2026-11-12T14:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/961897\/"},"modified":"2026-11-12T14:44:38","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T14:44:38","slug":"how-an-italian-capital-of-design-is-coping-with-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/961897\/","title":{"rendered":"How an Italian Capital of Design Is Coping with Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cParis and Barcelona have sharply curbed cars, but Milan has yet to follow,\u201d Pestellini Laparelli said. The city sits in the industrial Po Valley, in a basin that traps pollution. \u201cEveryone blames Milan\u2019s geography, but when Covid halted traffic, the air improved immediately,\u201d he added. \u201cThe city\u2019s geography is all the more reason to get cars off the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crowded mayoral race has as many as 20 possible candidates, \u201cyet only two candidates have mentioned bike lanes,\u201d he said. As a positive development, he pointed to the protected bike lane on Corso Buenos Aires \u2014 formerly known to me as \u201cdeath trap street\u201d when I would cycle amid its avalanche of traffic \u2014 but noted that the city took years to complete the one-mile project. Milan\u2019s Climate City Contract<\/a> outlines 150 projects aimed at climate neutrality by 2030, including cleaner energy, sustainable mobility and greener, more permeable streets. Their impact will hinge on implementation.<\/p>\n

\u201cForestami is another essential development,\u201d Pestellini Laparelli said, \u201cbut it will yield results in 10 years.\u201d For the time being he is redesigning Base, an industrial complex turned cultural center, as a \u201cclimate refuge\u201d \u2014 where plants, shade canopies and misting fans will create a public oasis. \u201cWe need immediate as well as long-term projects to deal with climate change,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In the garden of the Fondazione Luigi Rovati, I met Mario Cucinella, the museum\u2019s architect, to talk about building for a warming climate. His largest project in Milan, the 23-story Unipol Tower at Porta Nuova<\/a>, deploys an elliptical form, a mostly opaque double-skin facade and an atrium to buffer temperature fluctuations and reduce energy consumption.<\/p>\n

Some argue that less carbon is generated when architects adapt existing structures instead of building new ones. But Cucinella noted that Milan\u2019s building boom is bound to continue, fueled by wealthy European transplants drawn by Italy\u2019s flat tax on foreign income. Though construction is one of the most polluting industries, Cucinella uses recycled materials and advances energy-conserving designs. He has also pioneered a new lower-emissions building method for small dwellings, called NeVA, which uses an enormous 3-D printer to extrude a composite of earth and local-stone concrete.<\/p>\n

Cucinella counters the self-defeating call for more air-conditioning \u2014 which guzzles energy and expels hot air \u2014 with ancestral climate-control techniques. \u201cIn Italy, we had so many building methods to keep a house temperate,\u201d he said. \u201cWe just forgot them as we became dependent on air-conditioning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cParis and Barcelona have sharply curbed cars, but Milan has yet to follow,\u201d Pestellini Laparelli said. The city…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":961898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[11216,141669,463,529869,64,63,529868,529870,29868,75,529872,4359,529867,128,111657,529871,529873,22518],"class_list":["post-961897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-air-pollution","tag-andrea","tag-architecture","tag-area-planning-and-renewal","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bicycles-and-bicycling","tag-boeri","tag-congestion-pricing","tag-environment","tag-farresin","tag-global-warming","tag-milan-italy","tag-science","tag-simone","tag-stefano","tag-trimarchi","tag-urban-areas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/961898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}