The Landscape Challenge, Balancing Protection with Trasformation

This essay is a short introduction to the book by Lia Marchi, "Designing sustainable factories". Together with my colleague Ernesto Antonini, Professor of Architectural Technology, I have been Lia Marchi’s supervisor during her PhD research, whose topic was the assessment and mitigation of landscape and environmental impacts of industries. This research was funded by Orogel, an Italian leading agri-food company, and gave us the opportunity to address the issues of assessing the impact of industrial plants on the environment, which, despite being a very important and emerging topic, still lacks a structure body of knowledge. This book presents the results of the interdisciplinary research made by Lia Marchi under our supervision. My short introduction places this work with respect to issues related to the protection and transformation of the landscape in the Italian context and o the evolution of the conception of “landscape” as well.