Changing the change

Changing the Change Conference has been organized according to the principles of sustainability, both in terms of environmentally friendly-efficiency, for what we could do, and on the base of the spirit of sharing and quality welcoming activities.
The Conference offered a highly scientific and academic agenda together with a research and a project regarding virtual spaces, physical spaces and services, thought to be coherent and sharable by Changing the Change community.
Changing the Change Conference may provide Turin with a sign of the future goals in terms of sustainability, by presenting visions, proposals and tools, which, if they are included in the Conference manifesto, would be extremely useful for our city and its local government to give new directions for the city’s future.
The Conference has been part of the Torino 2008 World Capital Design agenda, which has worked in this sense too: this year is a moment to reflect upon “flexibility”, the way through which design connects knowledge and values, reads the change and, sometimes, pinpoints new directions.

AzzeroCO₂

The preparatory step of the Conference has been designed to have a reduced impact on the environment, to eliminate the greenhouse gases emission resulting from energy consumption, use of materials, transports and staff’s activities.
The AzzeroCO₂ “curing” action regards the Po river park. This will allow the reintroduction of local flora and fauna: 35 tons of CO₂ will be eliminated thanks to this action, the same amount that would have been consumed for the preparatory phase of the conference.

The Conference sites

The Institute of Biotechnology, where we have been, has been carefully designed. We have chosen this location because a high-quality Conference requires highly expressive and functional rooms.
The 11th July dinner has been held at Castello del Valentino. This Savoy residence is especially meaningful for us: it is the headquarter of the Faculty of Architecture of Politecnico di Torino. It has been a friendly dinner party with typical local food which is a mark of our territory: the Paniere della Provincia di Torino-Basket of Typical Products of Turin Provincial Government, a very successful initiative that opted for the sustainable short food production chain: from producer to consumer.

Special opportunities

More than 100 participants used the 20 bicycles we prepared, completely free of charge, to get around the city in a more human way.
GTT Gruppo Trasporti Torinesi also offered the public transportation’s use free of charge.
A lot of exhibitions, Olivetti, una bella Società, Flexibility and Piemonte Torino Design have been kept open in the evening by the TO2008WDC circuit for Changing the Change Community, during the 3 days of the Conference.

Thanks

I finally would like to thank the sponsors (The Regional Council of Piedmont, Torino World Design Capital 2008, The Chamber of Commerce of Turin, GTT-Gruppo Trasporti Torinese, Fantoni Group, DEGA) and the staff of Politecnico di Torino, who contributed as volunteers to make this meeting of ours possible in terms of organization and reception.

We all contribute to global warming producing carbon dioxide (CO2), methane gas and nitrous dioxide. In particular, as we well know, the emissions of CO2 are caused by almost everything we do, such as cooking, using our laptop, driving to work, flying to a symposium.

Starting just from the occasion given by this conference we have the opportunity to fight global warming by neutralizing that part of CO2 emissions coming from the event that will take to Torino over 300 researchers, most of them from foreign countries.

In fact, we believe that facing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of this temporary event will be the first minimum objective of the Changing the Change conference, hoping to give a positive signal for a concrete containment of emissions.

Of course it has to be part of a multilevel strategy to tackle climate change proactively and it will regard many matters related to the location of the conference: from the field of the energy consumption to the one of the energy efficiency of the buildings. Anyway the organizers are working at a domestic project in order to offset our emissions through the carbon capacity capture of trees. In collaboration with AzzeroCO2, an energy service company founded in 2004 by Legambiente, Ambiente Italia and Kyoto Club they developed a project to naturally absorbe CO2 in a specific area, chosen among different national and international offsetting projects submitted by the company.

The site is a river park (Parco del Po e dell’Orba) located in the North-West of Italy close to the city of Turin where 475 local species of trees will be planted in order to counterbalance 371 tons of carbon needed for all the activities of the conference.

This is part of a larger forestry project launched by AzzeroCo2 in collaboration with the Federation of the Italian national and regional parks and with Kyoto Club. More than 10 ha will be planted in this area generating more than 500,000 t of CO2 emissions reductions in the next years. This will be monitored and verified by a certification company.

The Changing the Change conference will take place in a maison de plaisance (house of pleasure). Of course one more chance to get and boost inspiring results from the three days meeting. In fact, the conference will be housed in an ancient castle, located inside a 19th-century park. It is an amazing historic site by the Po river, something maybe unusal for meetings, rich of history, dipped in the green and really close to the downtown of the city. In short, something really special.

The arrangement of the conference rooms and spaces inside and outside the building has been designed in order to minimise the impact of the conference and try to offset the carbon emissions produced by the meeting in Torino. The stiff architectural structure of the castle was mainly considered as an added value to the new concept of the spaces. At the ground floor there will be the “knowledge platform”, an area with four networked conference-rooms ideally and phisically connected with the wi-fi “design square”. This is a temporary light structure, in the middle of the courtyard, intended as a social space, made for receiving people and facilitating exchange of experiences, knowledge, information and talks …and agreeable catering too. On the first floor there will be spaces for welcoming, relax, reading, an exhibition of the design researches and internet points.

The Valentino Castle (Velentino is the name of a settlement in that region even back in Roman times), is a building based on the French pavillon-systeme model constructed and restructured in several phases since the second half of the 16th century. This residence, because of its excellence and role, in 17th century became the maison de plaisance of Princess Marie Christine of France who married Vittorio Amedeo I of Savoy. Of course during the conference you will have enough time to visit the Valentino Castle and the other royal residences in Torino and surroundings. They are all sites declared “Heritage of Humankind” by Unesco in 1997. The Valentino Castle is today home to two architecture and design faculties (Politecnico di Torino).

The Valentino castle is located in the homonymous park, an immense green area dotted with installations, paths for cycling and jogging, play areas and some considerable architectural traces left by Italian and International exhibitions held in 1884,1898, 1902 and 1911. You will not have to miss a visit to the botanical garden, a canoe trip on the Po river or a lunch in one of the prestigious rowing clubs by the river.