Home / News / humaneco / Recycle, Regenerate, Reinvent

Most of the time they surprise us, capturing our attention and putting on a show: but what was (or wasn’t) there before them?

We glance at them sideways, not sure at first if we like them or not, wondering what their real purpose is. Over time, we learn first to welcome them and then to admire them: now they are part of our surroundings, part of us. In short, they win our affection.

Temporary architectural installations are like comets: they light up unknown spaces, transforming their balance and astonishing those who experience them. Their power lies in redefining and regenerating, combining functionality, elegance, and design.

And then? Then nothing—the events end, the comet passes, the lights go out.

Must it really be this way?

The Temporary Becomes Permanent, Within Us

Ephemeral architecture, as its very name openly declares, is not meant to last. It is fleeting, perishable.

Literally, it means “lasting only one day.”

The backdrop of a celebration, an event, a season, carries within itself the “promise” of disappearing. And yet, without it, in our memory as spectators, the experience feels incomplete—lacking a visual anchor and a space in which the memory can move.

That is why ephemeral architecture, the one that lasts only a single day, has the duty (which is also a promise, but without quotation marks) to make itself unforgettable in its brief appearance.

And to be retrieved.

What does a work recreate when, beyond remaining in memory, it also lives on through its materials and in space? When its elements return to function elsewhere, changing shape, purpose, and atmosphere?

Sustainability sheds its overused vagueness of being merely a declaration of intent and takes on a concrete gesture: it reduces, regenerates, reinvents.

Open for Maintenance: The German Pavilion 2023

A project for the Architecture Biennale a few years ago, conceived and created as a material bank: a space built entirely with materials recovered in Venice—and beyond the island, from other exhibitions and installations.

Among the reused materials were also Nesite floors, originally designed for the USA Pavilion 2022 and for artist Simone Leigh, the first African American woman to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale.

On that occasion, Nesite had supplied a strong and resilient raised floor to properly support and integrate the artist’s sculptures. Those very same surfaces, which had hosted and protected works of art, returned in the new narrative of Open for Maintenance, proving that quality and aesthetics are not lost in the recycling process, but adapt and transform in new contexts

A revolution in its simplicity: an art exhibition never truly ends—it evolves into new forms of sociality, entertainment, study, and reflection. Materials return to availability for new projects and life cycles. For new people.

The opposite of “disposable,” the opposite of “use” itself.

Most to least viewed: The Connective Monument

Le guide turistiche iniziarono a guardarla per orientarsi nella città, i cittadini e le cittadine per immaginare quanto in alto potevano arrivare. Le coppie di stranieri in viaggio Another story of circular—indeed, perpetual—reuse is Most to least viewed by Eva and Franco Mattes.

The project was born with a clear objective: to be itinerant.

The installation was created using Nesite raised floors, modular and integrable by nature, a system that allows artists to recompose and reinvent the exhibition space on every new occasion.

The theme addressed by the installation is the hidden dangers of the web, the invisible use of our data, evoked through the mysterious, concealed world of servers — the very context for which the Nesite raised floor was originally conceived.

Technology becomes artistic language: the surface that normally supports digital infrastructures transforms into a critical scenography, a living part of the artwork, a narrative support that travels with the art, ready to change skin, structure, and meaning.

Again and again.

Until reaching Prague (and who knows where else) for Poetics of Encryption, carrying on its shoulders the traces of time and the experiences already lived.

Connective Monument — this is the name Eva and Franco devised for the perpetual Nesite floor: a material that lives again through space and time, capable, through its body, of reconnecting places, stories, and people.

The Philosophy of the Comet That Never Fades

Designing sustainable ephemeral architecture means thinking with foresight: it is an act of care that requires collaboration among all professionals involved—architects, companies, artisans, and curators.

It means imagining the journey of a panel, a beam, a slab beyond—far beyond—its first use.

The difference between an event that leaves a legacy to be lived and one that generates scraps and waste lies in the ability to bring the same material back to life. And each added life is one more breath for our Planet.

Sustainable architectural installations are perpetual comets, whose luminous trail does not fade but is awaited and embraced by other equally farsighted people.

Recycling and regeneration take nothing away from the charm of the temporary: they amplify it, make it memorable, and part of a creative economy.

Because true fulfillment is not—only—seeing a work come to life, but witnessing, and possibly taking part in, its rebirth.

Again and again.

Recycle, Regenerate, Reinvent | Umaneco by Nesite ©all rights reserved

Texts edited by Chiara Foffano – Illustrations by Ariele Pirona