A Habitable Planet, off-site solutions for the tenth edition of SOS - School Of Sustainability

Manni Green Tech is a partner of SOS - School of Sustainability, the school founded on the initiative of Architect Mario Cucinella awarding a first-level Master’s degree in Sustainable Design and Architecture. The SOS training course, now in its tenth edition, consists of a first stage of theoretical courses starting in October 2023, while from January until June 2024, students will have to put their acquired skills into practice through a series of project works featuring extremely topical themes. For the academic year 2023-24, Manni Green Tech will become a project track partner of SOS by providing its technical know-how to a group of students, assisting them in the development of a project focused on social and environmental well-being. A Habitable Planet – Modular and sustainable solutions is in fact, a project concerning the development of a student residence through a study of the architectural, energy and environmental impact of the building, with the application of Manni Green Tech construction technology. 

The need to develop such a project stem from the challenges of the construction and real estate industries characterised by ageing architecture, whose poor conditions entail high resource consumption, costs and exponentially increasing prices. These aspects, combined with a complex bureaucratic system with long waiting times, have led to the emergence of the housing shortage for university students as one of the most deeply felt social issues nationwide. The inspiration for achieving a solution to this need comes from the Casa 100K project by Architect Mario Cucinella first presented in 2007, which consisted of the ambitious goal of building a 100 square metre residence for 100,000 euro, capable of achieving 0 emissions, and which was also affordable. 

These core values for the work of SOS School of Sustainability, fully in line with Manni Green Tech’s principles, can also be found in the A Habitable Planet project. The proposal, in fact, aimed to provide a viable alternative, attainable through innovative architectural solutions capable of offering a high aesthetic level, while containing costs and ensuring a low environmental impact level, which, thanks to the high modularity provided by Manni Green Tech’s technological solution, enables a remarkable development speed, exceeding traditional construction techniques.

We are talking about the solutions offered by off-site construction, one of the Modern Methods of Construction, which fully meets these needs. In particular, Manni Green Tech’s dry steel technologies feature several advantages: light and quick-to-assemble components that reduce work and elements on site while keeping it clean, modularity and replicability of structures, ease of maintenance, earthquake-proof safety, as well as millimetric precision in design, fire resistance performance, accurate time and cost estimation, and high thermal-acoustic performance. The challenge for students will be to identify the architectural style of a building utilising technologies that meet these principles, that are easy to transport, affordable and energy efficient, without neglecting the aspect of modularity, which must be comparable to that of the industry, creating typological models which can be replicated for buildings with similar uses.

During this path of personal and professional growth, students are placed in a dynamic learning environment. To complete the 360° training experience, the trainees visited the factories of the Manni Group companies, Isopan and Manni Sipre, where they were able to immerse themselves in the reality in which the technologies they are studying, and which will be implemented within the project are born and they develop. An essential piece to guide the new generation of designers towards a future in which their knowledge will become a tool for change.

The two organisations have achieved mutual collaboration on the training plan. Architect Mario Cucinella, in fact, is a member of the teaching staff of the Manni Group Master’s course “Off-site Technologies for Architecture”, a high-level training course launched in Bologna in November 2023 and whose objective is to train technicians and architects in the most modern trends in the field of off-site construction technology, thus providing them with the ability to develop a cutting-edge design future.