The shapes of Energy

Energy production has become a fundamental issue for the autonomy and sustainability of a territory.\r\nIt’s urgent to rethink its origin as proximity productione, transforming places more and more attentive to environmental, landscape and social quality.\r\nHow can we accelerate this process and prepare cities and the countryside for future challenges?

In agreement with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the project aims to identify an energy production system that can take into account the potential of the florentine Chianti area. \r\nA socio-economic analysis was conducted to find out about the society living in the territory, the different productions and the real needs to be met.\r\nThis evaluation led to the choice of a biogas production plant. It’s a renewable energy that comes from the reuse of agricultural and organic waste, thus allowing to maintain a circularity of the product which from waste becomes a primary resource.\r\nThe project aims to undermine the idea that industry is a sectoral space within which a single activity is carried out. The goal is to configure the production plant as a multifunctional space, integrated into a heterogeneous system of local territorial resources.\r\nThanks to a strategic design, a large area of the cement plant will be returned to the community. The only private area will be the plant, where the building volumes will be concentrated. The quarry is composed by two amphitheaters, and will be the background to this new production reality. The amphitheaters will be put in their former habitat: the process consist in adding an organic layer and planting new tree species. At the end, an agrivoltaic system will be realized in order to take advantage of the solar energy.\r\nThe two sides of the valley will become an opportunity for slow tourism, where people can walk and cycle among the pre-existing historical buildings surrounded by the Castles of Vicchiomaggio and of Verrazzano and the Tower Luciana Astronomical Observatory.\r\nIn this creative process, the architecture aims to join the engineering function with a compositional aesthetic that is attentive to the constrained landscape of the Greve valley and becomes the symbol of a productive wealth in the making.\r\nTo find the harmony between landscapes as H. Desplanques wrote “The Tuscan countryside was built like a work of art by people who in the 15th ordered their painters to paint. People built their rural landscapes as if they had no other concern than for beauty”.