Pizziolo, M & Ravasio, R 2026, Sustainable Public Art for Sustainable Cities, enhanced Challenge, EdiXion, Dubai.
Can public art breathe with the rhythms of nature? In a world that too often speaks of sustainability only in terms of solar panels and recycling, this book proposes a conceptual revolution. The sustainability of public art is not only a technical matter, but an ethical dimension that touches the very heart of artistic creation. Every work of public art is, even before being visible, a perceptual threshold that questions our relationship with the environment, the community, the future. From design to disposal, every choice becomes an act of responsibility towards the generations to come.
The starting point is concrete: Masdar City. Between 2018 and 2020, Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio in collaboration with Masdar City – a visionary city in the United Arab Emirates conceived in 2006 as the world’s first zero-emissions city – developed an unprecedented model of sustainable public art, asking questions that no one had previously formulated with such radicalism. How does one design a work that respects the environment without betraying artistic autonomy? How does one balance respect for local traditions with contemporary innovation? How does one guarantee that art generates positive social impact rather than being reduced to simple urban ornament? The responses developed constitute today a model replicable anywhere, but arise from a unique experience, that which led the authors to collaborate with government agencies, cultural institutions and great artists: among whom Tomás Saraceno, whom they selected for the creation of a monumental work when in 2012 they had received the commission to create the site-specific collection for the new campus of New York University in Abu Dhabi, in whose Library it was placed.
Accelerated urbanisation without cultural infrastructure. In emerging countries billions of people move to cities, but these grow without a soul, without identity, without that symbolic dimension that only art can build. Here sustainability becomes social urgency: we cannot afford to replicate the mistakes of the West, where public art too often is synonymous with expensive and self-referential decoration: a different approach is needed. The one we developed with the “Globality-Locality” project between 2018 and 2020 for Expo Dubai. The project, which radically rethought the relationship between art and territory and which was based on the concept of diffused museum. The city is no longer a container for art, but art becomes urban connective tissue, where every intervention dialogues with local traditions and the real needs of the community. Dubai is a city that has grown quickly, populated by non-interconnected cultures, which precisely in 2020 began to rethink itself as an element of aggregation. In the “Globality-Locality” project thanks to an innovative social mapping, developed in collaboration with the university of Al Ain, which literally mapped the souls of Dubai, art becomes an instrument to mend tears, transforming space into a threshold of encounter.
A revolutionary philosophy: art as ecosystem. No longer objects to be placed in space, but organisms that are born, grow, transform and – when necessary – dissolve, returning to the earth what they have taken. It is the end of the myth of artistic eternity, replaced by a cyclical vision that embraces natural rhythms. Materials that degrade ennobling the landscape; works that evolve with the seasons; installations that become habitats for other forms of life. An art that does not limit itself to representing nature, but becomes nature – breathing, metabolising, regenerating.
The sustainability of public art: a key for liveable cities. The reflections gathered here arise from twenty years of collaboration between Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio and institutions on three continents: from India to South Africa, from Abu Dhabi to Milan. Each project has confirmed an increasingly evident truth: sustainable public art is not a luxury for evolved societies, but a necessity for any community that wants to build a future worthy of being inhabited.