"In a good object, there is passion, history and investment," says the bioclimatic architect, who is curating "The Green Circle" event at Milano Home. The protagonists are manufacturers, but also the hyper-technological products

"The object is nothing more than an evocation of a cultural archetype that fulfils a need of ours - evocative, functional, emotional - and is of great importance to our psychological well-being."

Isabella Goldmann, bioclimatic architect, president of Goldmann & Partners and scientific director of the IRCAS International Research Centre has been involved in sustainability for 35 years. A topic that is discussed today in the most diverse circles, on television and elsewhere, often with an irritating professorial attitude and only in very rare cases with full knowledge of the facts.

Goldmann is firm and resolute on this point. "Without competence one cannot speak of sustainability. 

This statement makes no bones about it. Getting to the heart of the matter, what is sustainability?

"It is the combination of intelligent design and a tight budget. I started by trying to copy what the ancients did: making things with local materials that would last a long time and that had a brilliant idea behind them. 

When I embarked on this path nobody listened to me. Demand was almost non-existent. I was considered a 'vegan of architecture'. In the period between the 1980s and 1990s, oil had broken the banks and given free rein to short-lived thinking: air conditioning in summer and heating in winter and everyone was satisfied. A short-sighted view, but going against such a current of thought was like treading water.

I didn't give up, I opened a research centre and from that moment on, things began to change. 

Faced with an insurmountable mountain to climb, Goldmann found the most suitable way to reach the summit.

"I realised that I had to convince people that sustainability offered advantages".

How did you manage to overcome the general level of mistrust?

"I explained that sustainability is not only about protecting the environment, but also includes other areas such as energy, economic, social, environmental, managerial, technological and human. Analysing the data coming in from different countries around the world, we realised that sustainability, if done in a systemic way, works. The Research Centre was instrumental in making a breakthrough.”

The sustainability of objects has gone hand in hand with the design of bioclimatic spaces. "Few people know, for example, that Milan Central Station is the only bioclimatic railway station in Europe.

Sustainability and listening. On several occasions you have emphasised this combination. Specifically, what is the relationship between them?

"Listening is the basis of every stage of life. Applied to objects, listening to those who produced them helps to understand what motivated an entire system to produce that particular object. In a good object there is passion, history, prototypes thrown away, investment, people who believed in it'.

At Milano Home, sustainability will not only be a recurring theme on the exhibitors' stands, but will also have its own space called "The Green Circle", which was already much appreciated by companies and visitors at last year's edition.

“It will be a harmonious mix of the various sustainability,” says Goldmann, “where the protagonists are projects that are in production and not prototypes. The Green Circle is an event-exhibition that selects objects well made by people who believe in them and have invested a lot to bring them to life".

What is new in this edition?

"This year it will not be an enclosed space, but a circular court, a kind of open labyrinth that will allow visitors to enjoy themselves much more freely. I like to call it a slow food of household objects. There will be more products on display than last year. Carpets, chairs, lamps of various sizes, there is even a bed. There will be manufactures but also hyper-technological products. Green Circle offers the insight and motivation to fall in love with an object”.

A passion that must be aligned with the real needs that can lead to a purchase.

"Buying driven by emotion is a superficial suggestion: it means to assign to this object the task of solving a contingent problem. The approach of those who decide to live with this object because they have fallen in love with it is quite different. Consumers must be encouraged to make rational purchases by reducing impulse buying.”