Making public art sustainable

Public art rulebook

Before the intervention. Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, conceived in 2006 as the first zero-emissions city in the world, was born with an explicit vocation: to become a replicable urban model. The intention to integrate public art into the spaces of the city was present from the outset, but a framework was missing that would allow decisions on what could become permanent in public space. Public art was normally approached as a question of selecting artists or works, while the criteria that are determinant for a city remained undefined: relationship with the cultural context and local traditions, social impact, materials, maintenance, duration and end of life of the interventions. Without verifiable parameters, every commission remained an isolated episode, difficult to justify over the long term.

The rulebook. On assignment from Masdar City, between 2018 and 2020 Marina Pizziolo and Romano Ravasio develop an operational guide, Rulebook and field experiments, for the design and management of sustainable public art. The document addresses the tension between artistic autonomy and sustainability: the aim is not to impose limits on artists, but to define shared criteria applicable before the commission of a work: culture and traditions of the context, social impact, materials, maintenance, expected duration, life cycle and end of life of the intervention. The system makes it possible to evaluate the compatibility of a project before the selection of the artist, transforming the commission from an episodic cultural decision into a programmable and administrable one. The model is subsequently applied at metropolitan scale in the Globality-Locality project for Expo Dubai, through a sociocultural mapping developed with Al Ain University, to identify where and under what conditions public art can function in a multicultural city.

After the adoption of the criteria. Administrations can establish in advance which interventions are sustainable, plan their management over time and justify the acceptance or rejection of a project with verifiable technical criteria. A public artwork becomes a plannable component of the city, with responsibilities and duration defined before realisation. The model is conceived as a universal reference: applicable to any urban context, regardless of geographical scale or cultural tradition.

The updated version of the original text is in preparation for publication: Pizziolo, M & Ravasio, R 2026, Sustainable Public Art for Sustainable Cities, enhanced Challenge, EdiXion, Dubai.