Today it is essential that all people and especially architects and designers display a commitment to areas such as alternative energy, energy conservation and ecologically and socially sustainable architectural design. Through coursework and hands-on practical work and field visits in and around Rome , the program offers a broad understanding of the links and tensions between environmental challenges and sustainable solutions, and a sustainable perspective on best practices within urban development and transportation, alternative energy sources and energy conservation, and waste management.
Mission
Located in the Sabina area, 30 km north of Rome, the Design Center is concerned with the search for globally sustainable, whole and ecologically sound technologies and ways of life.
Within this search the role of the Design Center is to explore and demonstrate a wide range of alternatives, communicating to other people the options for them to achieve positive change in their own lives.
This communication involves:
- Inspiring - instilling the desire to change by practical example
- Informing - feeding the desire to change by providing the most appropriate information
- Enabling - providing effective and continuing support to put the change into practice.
The Design Center has a holistic approach to its work, integrating ideas and practice relating to land use, shelter, energy conservation and use, diet and health, waste management and recycling.
Through its resident community and work organisation, the Design Center is also committed to the implementation of co-operative principles and best achievable environmental practices.
Mission Statement: Teaching through the practical example
The project is aimed at Foreign Universities who teach Architecture, Design and Art.
The main objective is to teach sustainability mainly through practical projects of construction and building rehabilitation.
In parallel we aim to spread awareness campaigns and environmental education through cultural events, courses, workshops, exhibitions, publications and videos designed to describe the reality of contemporary life in Italy.
Primary purposes
· To give innovative teaching methods emphasizing the direct experience of design and construction;
· To develop training and dissemination of appropriate models, through cultural events, courses, workshops, exhibitions, publications, videos;
· To select and document the activities of architects and designers, with special emphasis on youth;
· To promote research projects;
· To create synergies with local communities and citizens;
· To create a network of cultural exchanges to promote contact between students and professionals of various nationalities;
· To promote sustainable tourism.
Who?
Universities, scholars, editors, designers, trade shows, real estate industry, including non-specialist audience, are the consumers of the Design Center.
What will we do?
The project of the Center is to operate as a training centre that can accommodate students and visitors by providing a wide range of practical solutions for sustainability, covering all aspects of Green Living: environmental construction, eco-health, renewable energy, energy efficiency and organic farming.
Sabina Design Center will be unique in Italy as a fine example of learning through practical demonstration. An active laboratory that will produce a wide range of practical examples of sustainable solutions such as houses made of waste, wood, straw, adobe, brick, stone. Students in the workshops will also be required to participate in the design and will become familiar with renewable energy systems that are carbon neutral and self-sufficient.
These systems include the installation of:
- Photovoltaic and Solar Thermal
- Micro-grid
- Off-grid and grid-connected
- Biomass combined heat and power (CHP)
- Geothermal Heat Pumps
- A series of small-medium sized wind turbines
- Phyto-purification systems
- Extensive gardens and organic gardens
- Rainwater collection systems and gray water recovery