This is why we are featuring, as an exclusive, the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, now under construction, narrated by the artistic curator Davide Rampello and the designers Carlo Ratti and Italo Rota, who unveil a glossary of materials with which the pavilion has been implemented and finished: algae, orange peels, coffee, mycelium, recycled plastics... All of them, from A to Z, are the result of advanced creative experimentation and prototyped invention Made in Italy.

While the Italian Pavilion calls attention to neo-materials that blur the boundaries between natural and artificial, because in the future they can return to being raw material for reuse, there are people like the architect Thomas Rau, who sets out to give materials a passport, thanks to preliminary inventories and techniques of design and construction that allow entire buildings to be dismantled for recovery of the resources they contain. The different materials interpreted in an already completed work are also in the thoughts of Italian architects who have chosen the know-how of Italian companies to open the way for new solutions of efficiency and durability, but also of beauty.

Finally, there is another fundamental ‘non-material’ that becomes a binder for the future: the digital. But that’s a theme for an upcoming issue.