Landscape Sustainability of Architecture in Fernando Menis’s Work: A Sensitive Design Rooted in Volcanic Nature

Abstract

The many declinations of the idea of sustainability in architecture concern different disciplinary areas as well as all phases of the construction process. Alongside the more established categories of the sustainability of materials used and the technical construction processes and economic investments mobilized, there are now new facets of the idea of sustainability. They affect the impact that architecture can have on communities in terms of social relations and quality of context of life. This work explores the idea of landscape sustainability of architecture, understood as the ability of man-made interventions to belong to the context and the inhabitants, while promoting forms of alliance with the ecosystems at multiple spatial and temporal scale. Starting from the analysis of some trends in contemporary architecture that deals with these problems, the research identifies the volcanic environment as a terrain for exploration, with particular interest in its natural characteristics and dynamic interactions with anthropic contexts. After choosing the region of Macaronesia as a case study, the research focuses on the work of Fernando Menis. As an architect from the Canary Islands, he has developed his own modus operandi which, while rooted in its original context, is inspired by principles of social, cultural, and landscape sustainability of architecture that are valid today everywhere. The objective of this work is therefore to draw a reflection from his architectural poetics, with the intention of outlining the features of a possible contemporary design posture based on principles of landscape sustainability.