The International Scientific Committee of AGATHÓN, for its issue n. 11|2022, which will be published in June, promotes the topic GREENERY | Its symbiosis with the built form. Deforestation and forest fires, urban sprawl, indiscriminate use of non-renewable raw materials and increase in CO₂ emissions contribute to global warming and climate change, causing a devastating impact on our fragile ecosystem, on society and on economy. Once it was established that we will not be self-sufficient in fossil fuels before 2050 (maybe), we recall the role that nature and greenery in general can play in the short term to address the current challenge that threatens the entire Planet. It was already highlighted by Beynus’ studies (2002): a knowledge heritage useful for the regeneration, with awareness and responsibility, of the built environment. Over the millennia, Nature has perfected strategies and solutions, processes and mechanisms to adapt to different climate and physical conditions through the rationalisation of the use of matter and energy by optimising material and immaterial metabolic exchanges. Earlier, Simon (1969) had understood the prospective of a ‘new ecology’ where the animate and inanimate components of the built environment combine to characterise a ‘unified’ landscape. While the Modern Movement has considered landscape, urbanism, architecture and design as separate disciplines, in the new millennium there is a ‘scalar shift’ in which they are considered as part of a unified territorial system, and in which we are called to design for man and living beings, in a connection based on profound knowledge and understanding of the trajectories and coexisting needs of the many human and non-human inhabitants of the built environment (Tesoriere, 2020). The relationship between the parts of the system takes on crucial importance when we adopt a broader and more systemic vision, supported by a holistic and participatory approach (Otto, 2008). Digital technologies can support this ‘double convergence’ towards a ‘cybernetic ecology’ allowing us to see the natural and artificial world as a whole (Ratti and Belleri, 2020).

Once the classic artificial/natural dualism is overcome, possible new project scenarios emerge, made thinkable by the potential of computer sciences, bioengineering, digital technologies, parametric design and 3D printing. They open up to new mediations and intelligence forms borrowed from a multiplicity of living species which define and configure bio-design, bio-architecture, bio-infrastructure, and bio-city solutions. A new interdisciplinary, systemic and multiscalary logic begins to spread: from cyber-gardening to the bio-technological remetabolization of whole neighbourhoods, to responsive envelope systems that integrate biomaterials and/or cultures of living microorganisms but also new opportunities for circular sustainability. The greenery has many advantages for the environment, the society, the economy, but also for health, well-being and quality of life. It is also recognised its natural capital, its function as support for life and for ecosystem services. Therefore, the creative and strategic use of the greenery is essential for an informed sustainability.

Adequate importance is given to biodiversity whose increase seems to guarantee economic benefits: the European Commission (2020) has promoted the 2030 Biodiversity Strategy as a fundamental element to relaunch a sustainable development, already in the ‘short term’. The recent emphasis on the ‘regeneration’ of the built environment gives an opportunity for a more holistic design, involving the earth, biotic and human systems of a specific context to achieve more general objectives concerning actions with a positive balance of land use. The EU Renovation Wave programme, and part of the New EU Bauhaus, gives important tools to renew the existing building heritage’s energy efficiency and also to regenerate – through digital means – urban habitats through the integration and symbiosis of natural and built environments in order to meet needs in a fair and socially inclusive way with a considerably lower resource consumption, emissions and biodiversity loss while addressing the effects of climate change (Ness, 2021). The pioneering research by ecoLogicStudio (Valenti and Pasquero, 2021) is a clear example. It highlighted how artificial and natural elements (with a rather reduced mass) can integrate each other within a contemporary habitat to provide symbiotic material and natural services, thus, starting the transition from an ‘overbuilt city’ to a more ‘lively’ and ‘adaptive’ city where, for example, living organisms and algae ensure basic needs such as oxygen, nutrition and energy. Integrated green technologies and systems, relevant in high-density urban contexts for environmental balancing, therefore represent potential new areas of research.

In the light of these considerations, the Call of AGATHÓN 11, turning to disciplinary areas of the Project and in particular of Landscape, Urbanism, Architecture, Engineering, Architectural Technology, Design, Restoration Recovery, and Representation, presents the subject Greenery | Its symbiosis with the built form with the aim of collecting essays and critical reflections, original research and experiments, projects and actions. These contributions, concerning the issues of process, product and service in terms of sustainability, circular economy and development, can stimulate an open and interdisciplinary debate on the issues, available in a non-exhaustive list below:

• Sustainable Development Goals, New Green Deal, Renovation Wave, New EU Bauhaus;
• Production and management of sustainable forests, silviculture, forest ecology, natural reserves and parks, ecosystems and biodiversity: tools, policies and actions for the protection, management and enhancement of the natural capital in terms of quality, beauty and enjoyment of the natural landscape in urban and suburban areas;
• Historic architecture, ancient contexts and vegetation: restoration and preservation of gardens and parks from historic to recent events;
• Digital tools (ICT, IoT, big data, GIS, etc.) and methods for mapping, cataloguing, knowledge and management of urban (vertical and horizontal) and suburban green spaces, of its physical and demographic characteristics, as well as for monitoring its health;
• Urban farming, in the community, horizontal and vertical and relations between built environment, food production, sales and consumption, environment, ecosystem and technologies;
• Urbanature, urban forestation, ‘green’ infrastructure, parks, gardens, ‘green’ courtyards, removal projects in urban contexts for the reduction of land use and the increase of the permeability of surfaces, regeneration of urban voids with public green areas;
• Nature-based solutions for the resilience and risk reduction of vulnerable contexts, for urban and built environment regeneration and the enhancement of cultural heritage, for the control of microclimate, air and water quality, for the increase of biodiversity and ecological footprint, for the compensation of soil consumption, health and psychological well-being;
• Green building evaluation tools and metrics for greeneries capable of, with a holistic approach, including its effects and benefits at different scales, from territorial to environmental units;
• Passive bioclimatic systems with greenery and intelligent online home-automation management and control;
• Green raw materials, secondary materials and waste from agriculture and pruning for the production of energy, building elements/components, artifacts and new bio-based materials;
• Digital and bio tools and technologies to structure and manage the cybernetic relationships between buildings and vegetation (sensors, activators, artificial intelligence, photobiotic reactors, photosynthesis, etc.);
• Installations and set-ups in public and private spaces.