In a corner of the uni­verse, a star is spin­ning. A star that means eve­ry­thing to us because it is our home. It is a place of excep­ti­o­nal beauty, diver­sity and exu­be­rant nature, of which we are a part. It must be a tem­po­rary mistake for us to go against nature in the pur­s­uit of short­term inte­rests, for how much more rewar­ding, how much more beau­ti­ful it is to do as nature does and strive for per­fec­tion. Nothing in nature is out of place, no stone in the wrong posi­tion: nature itself, howe­ver it appe­ars, is neces­sa­rily beau­ti­ful. This beauty draws us in and is where we relax and feel at home. Places that have grown over cen­tu­ries, old cul­tu­ral lands­ca­pes or Ita­lian hill­side vil­la­ges fill us with joy. We feel at home where eve­ry­thing has its place: in the park, by the lake, in the open coun­try­side. Yet we have desig­ned cities accor­ding to the needs of cars and shop­ping cen­tres accor­ding to the scale of maxi­mum profit. We have con­cre­ted over entire lands­ca­pes igno­ring man and his nature. It is time to cor­rect this. Back to nature does not mean sacri­fice but profit because the beauty of nature is pur­po­se­ful, sustai­na­ble and the­re­fore eco­no­mic.

We live in a time where com­ple­tely dif­fe­rent places start to look the same. It’s the same logic which is indis­cri­mi­na­tely at work there: the logic of the quick and cheap, of the arbi­trary. The result is sepa­ra­tion, nature is locked out, the short­term goal is the mea­sure for eve­ry­thing. As a con­se­quence, beauty expi­res because it is more than the sum of its parts. If you replace one of them care­les­sly, then the cal­cu­la­tion no longer works and we lose our home. We only feel good if eve­ry­thing is right, if the indi­vi­dual ele­ments of our sur­roun­dings har­mo­niously intertwine. We feel good because we are allo­wed to be human, because our envi­ron­ment com­p­lies with us.

Nature and urba­nity are only oppo­si­tes where we have gene­ra­ted them with glass, con­crete and asp­halt. »The world is a pro­cess of our thin­king,« wrote Ein­stein, who added: »It cannot be chan­ged wit­hout chan­ging our thin­king.« The fact that it can be done dif­fe­rently by thin­king dif­fe­rently is shown for example with the Bosco Ver­ti­cale in Milan, a ver­ti­cal forest with 900 trees rooted in the faca­des of two highrise buil­dings. It was cre­a­ted by the archi­tect Ste­fano Boeri with eco­lo­gi­cal and aes­the­tic den­sity – deca­des after Hun­der­twas­ser had plan­ted a »tree tenant« on the first floor of a rented flat in Alser­bach­strasse in Vienna. The tree grew along the window and amazed pas­sersby. The visi­o­nary later out­lined his pro­gramme with the phrase: »Roofs must become forests and streets must become green val­leys.« Hun­der­twas­ser tac­kled the urban lands­cape with bright colours and round shapes like excla­ma­tion marks. But you need whole sen­ten­ces to do the same thing with nature because the design voca­bu­lary of nature is extre­mely com­plex but not stri­king. Its beauty unfolds in its struc­ture, rhythm and repe­ti­tion.

Beauty always invol­ves func­ti­o­na­lity: nature doesn’t know super­fluous­ness. Even the splen­dour of a flower serves a pur­pose and appe­ars subli­mely beau­ti­ful because of this: nothing can be left out or added. Besi­des form, mate­rial and appe­a­rance, it needs ano­ther qua­lity for us to feel some­thing is beau­ti­ful: time. Beauty must prove itself. Only some­thing that stands the test of time and lasts deca­des later is truly beau­ti­ful. In order to pre­serve it, it is neces­sary to think in cycles and not in short­term trends. Good is what remains, what sur­vi­ves. Beauty is not a short­term effect but only flou­ris­hes with sustai­na­bi­lity. Some­thing that is sustai­na­ble, that holds together, is auto­ma­ti­cally beau­ti­ful. It inte­gra­tes itself natu­rally into the res­pec­tive envi­ron­ment and merges into it. This is why grown struc­tu­res create wel­l­being and why the per­ma­nent brings com­fort.

Flora and fauna are the result of an ongo­ing pro­cess of adapta­tion. Nature is above all prac­ti­cal: any­thing that doesn’t work or is super­fluous is devou­red by the wea­ther or evo­lu­tion. What remains is cla­rity, end­urance and rene­wal. For thou­sands of years, man has shaped his world: we have cul­ti­va­ted deserts, cre­a­ted cul­tu­ral lands­ca­pes and pre­ser­ved habi­tats worth protecting.It’s up to us: what we do, under­take or pro­duce must be per­ma­nent and still make sense deca­des from now. This is how the world will remain a beau­ti­ful place for us. We have the tech­ni­cal oppor­tu­ni­ties, resour­ces and know­ledge for this.

Let’s get star­ted, let’s get on with it!