text Michelangelo Giombini
photos Andrés Otero
portraits Marino Ramazzotti

Just as Milan was winning the chance to host Expo 2015 on the theme of “Feeding the Planet”, Interni offered the audience of the FuoriSalone the major event GreenEnergy Design, the tenth of its kind created for Milan Design Week, with a series of installations that focused on the eco-sustainable aesthetic and eco-emotional design.

Interni put together an international group of designers and entrepreneurs to analyze the relationship of responsibility that links contemporary architecture/design to themes of environmental protection and renewable energies, promoting experimentation that may lead to a ‘sustainable landscape’ for our cities. With the indispensable support of co-producers Mini and Pirelli RE Ecobuilding, the show was rich in stimuli, metaphoric and conceptual references, constructed analogies, related to themes connected with the safeguarding of the environment. Themes that are very timely, but are often discussed only in a superficial way. The in-depth research of the designers and companies also came to terms with the extraordinary spaces of the Ca’ Granda, the ancient hospital of Milan designed by Filarete, and now the headquarters of the Università degli Studi. This structure was also an illustration of a sustainable life cycle of architecture, and a pleasant surprise for those visiting the site for the first time. After the Historic Gates of the city, with HeavyLight (2006), and the Castello Sforzesco, with DecodeElements (2007), Interni once again looks into the history of the city, to make people more familiar with historic sites and, this year, a place where the human and intellectual resources of the future take form.