“Think in a sustainable way”: The main attraction of Ecobuild 2012, 20-22 March, London ExCel. The concept is an area built completely in an eco-compatible way and it will distinguish the Italian pavilion, the most visited national space during the 2011 edition.

London, 13th December 2011 - Ecobuild is the world’s biggest event for sustainable design, construction and the built environment and the UK’s largest construction event of any kind. The Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the UK has coordinated the Italian presence at the event for the last 3 years. During the last edition, associations of enterprises, industrial districts, architects and various Italian regional governments presented their latest innovations and excellences in the research and development of energy solutions and sustainable constructions (from the latest innovations presented by Ceramic Tiles of Italy, to the projects of Casa Clima Agency and Italian certification schemes such as the Lombardy Region’s CESTEC, etc...). The 2012 edition will take place from the 20th to the 22nd of March 2012 at ExCel, London's exhibition centre.

Use Sustainable Brains is the name of the main attraction of Ecobuild 2012. The author is Carlo Beltramelli, a 56 year old designer from Vicenza, Italy, who also created last year’s main attraction “Water's Nest”. This year the subject will be sustainability, viewed as a relation and communication space. This concept inspires the idea to design a meeting area which is reproduced in multiple contexts, from the mountains to the beach, with eco-friendly materials and shaped like a USB key.

In this age of strapping technological connections and social networking, the topic of the environment has  to recall the theme of ‘exchanging relationships’, even more so in the context of the world's leading trade fair of sustainable design and architecture, which is about to land in Mumbai and  Shanghai.

Ecobuild 2012’s main attraction presents a flexible concept which is adaptable both to internal and external environments. It can be positioned in every kind of open air space accessible to everybody. It could be positioned on the sea shore, on a hill, up in the mountains or even in a public park. Use Sustainable Brains is an example of eco-sustainable architecture which embraced the concepts of a “sustainable society” and “social interaction”.  The project presents the “sustainable society” as a transition from the online to the offline world which consists in a pursuit for personal connections, face-to-face communications and in the retrieval of places which have lost their social importance.

“The project recalls the design of an USB stick while adds an additional statement: to reconnect people, to refresh the use of our brains and of reasoning”, says Giuseppe Paoletti, the Deputy Secretary General of The Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the UK and the coordinator of the project. “We believe that this concept, although quite provocative, refers to a lot of people. Moreover, this is an essential part of the idea behind Ecobuild: an opportunity for meetings and