Emilio Ambasz | Green architecture & design tales

A pioneer of sustainable architecture, the architect Emilio Ambasz has been pushing forward pressing themes and ideas since the 1970s, from urban forestation to the reuse of existing buildings through the revitalising use of natural elements.

Projects and buildings such as the Acros Building in Fukuoka (Japan) - built 25 years ago and awarded first prize by the Japanese Institute of Architecture - have made famous his original approach to architecture as landscape, namely as a landscape that moulds the earth so that it can comfortably accommodate people. Wary of ideology that fades with the passage of time, Ambasz also innovated in the way he presented his projects through the medium of the fable, whose poetic essence resists time with the core of a truth disguised as a children's fairy tale.

This book, edited by Fulvio Irace, brings together for the first time the design stories and writings with which Emilio Ambasz accompanied the projects that marked the various stages of his prolific career: an anthology that puts his gentle manifesto into practice – green over gray – and where his most iconic pieces of architecture are retraced, alongside stories of cities he has loved or dreamed of and conversations with architects and artists with whom he has established a unique relationship of elective affinities.