Mobility networks as infrastructures for the production of renewable energy.

The online competition, part of the programme of the Italian Pavilion at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, wishes to contribute to the development of concrete ideas-projects for the use of technologies focused on the production of renewable energy in areas related or in proximity to infrastructures; at the same time it intends to stimulate original solutions for the integration of highway and railway networks within their surrounding territories by searching for a symbiosis, as necessary as it is virtuous, between the natural and artificial landscape.

The design and cultural challenge proposed to participants is that of utilising networks of mobility – with their berms, trenches, intersections, viaducts, tunnels, setback areas, leftover spaces, and spaces of rest and maintenance – to create new forms of land art or environmental art at the service of energy production that, without interfering with the normal and safe operation of these same infrastructures, are able to generate energy and thus economic resources, to be re-invested in the future development of the community. The bio-technological parkways of the third millennium, other than producing energy, may also be imagined as a means for absolving other complementary functions, such as the absorption of noise, atmospheric particulate matter, carbon monoxide and pollution in general. Obviously there are no limits to the fantasy and articulation of the possible functions that can be associated with the ideas-projects, so long as the primary programme remains the generation of clean energy and the rehabilitation of the landscape.