Meet me at the bioclimatic shelter

We had not even had time to build our own fallout shelter – one of Silicon Valley’s trends in recent years, with size and gadgets depending on one’s means and tastes – when suddenly the bioclimatic version came along.

Amidst the magnificent rubbish of internet slop – the trash that circulates freely on our phones and sometimes seeps into newspapers, tabloids, online outlets and ‘mainstream’ media – there is a veritable swarm of ‘bioclimatic refugees’. Other ill-omened memes in the summer heat: “Be aware that you are closer to being climate refugees than to Elon Musk”

There you go! Superstitions! Neither the shelter nor Elon Musk. Unlike the nuclear ones, so dear to Musk’s affluent followers, the bioclimatic ones are strictly public. They appear to be pergola-style gazebos reminiscent of the old Unopiù advertisements in our mothers’ magazines, with dense coverings of climbing plants and various sprinklers of cool water. In short, a Twiga designed by a Santanché who’s suddenly taken out a subscription to Gardenia.

The name ‘bioclimatic refuge’ is evocative in itself; one imagines Cortina, Cervinia, Mollino’s daring ski resort architecture. Higher and higher! as the famous advert with Mike used to say. Instead, you’re in the city, under the gazebo. The most famous one, in fact, was launched by Rome’s mayor, Gualtieri, and the councillor for green spaces, Alfonsi, and is located in Centocelle; after all, it makes sense to start by providing bioclimatic protection for the suburbs and only then move on to the city centre. Having set up giant screens to watch the Strega Prize final, Rome’s suburbs will now also have shelters fitted with misting systems (at this point, many will be leaving their homes in Piazza di Spagna and Navona to make use of these facilities).

In any case, the bioclimatic shelter by Gualtieri is situated in none other than Piazza dei Gerani – the perfect location. “The structure is situated near a playground and the tram stop and is made of steel, measuring 9.5 by 9.5 metres and 4.4 metres high,” reads the online description. At its centre there will be an olive tree (perhaps also symbolic and auspicious for the upcoming electoral challenges) and then “climbing plants (wisteria, American vines, Canadian vines, rincosperma) which will create a space where people can sit in the cool shade of the trees and under the misters, with convenient power sockets available for charging phones or using computers” (what could possibly go wrong, given Rome’s legendary maintenance standards). 

However, let us remain constructive. Take the ‘Tiberis’ public and free river swimming pools, for example. If you picture them in Paris or even Milan, they seem brilliant. In Rome, you’re immediately struck by suspicion: in a city where every public work that’s built, by some tragic law of entropy and physics, is immediately abandoned, vandalised and rebuilt for the next Jubilee, you immediately picture a wild boar having a bath. But, once again, let’s stay positive. 

The rest area and charging point, which cost 138,000 euros, will be just the first of its kind. Naturally, Roman sarcasm is running rampant on social media, with some saying: ‘Watch out – with all those climbing plants and foliage, the rest area will look dangerously like a tree, so they’ll cut it down straight away. The reference is to the ‘hot’ – literally – topic of recent months, with the Roman administration claiming to have planted 68,000 trees, and accusing anyone who sees the perfectly healthy, historic pine and holm oak trees in front of their homes being cut down of being defeatist fascists.

So, as left-wingers who actually voted for him – Gualtieri – and who think he’s a good mayor, but precisely for that reason can’t stomach being taken for a ride, we who fear that the seventy thousand trees planted might also include ornamental potted plants and bonsai – a bit like when the Government counted the number of public beaches in Italy and came up with some extraordinary figures (they counted rocks, cliffs and perhaps even bioclimatic shelters as beaches too). In short, we have been deceived twice over. 

In any case, the ‘bioclimatic refuge’ is becoming something of a craze, something of an obsession – much like visiting villages during Covid, and the plexiglass partitions that were everywhere during the pandemic: a real catchphrase, in short. And it’s not just Rome: the municipality of Alessandria in Piedmont, so as not to end up like Alexandria in Egypt, has launched a ‘call’ – not those group phone calls people love to make, especially on trains and without headphones, but rather a competition for a ‘bioclimatic plant oasis’. Bologna, on the other hand, boasts no fewer than 28 bioclimatic refuges: including ‘the Renzo Renzi Library of the Cineteca Foundation and the exhibition hall of the Civic Archaeological Museum’.  And plenty of other indoor spaces. Without climbing plants. With power sockets, we imagine. But then again, a bioclimatic refuge is a very broad concept; it can even be a large room with air conditioning, it seems. If everything is a bioclimatic refuge, is nothing a bioclimatic refuge?

What a commotion under the open sky, and beneath the bioclimatic shelter. I wonder if these shelters or oases will become permanent ‘landmarks’ in our cities (with permanent road signs, like the one in Rome for the old bunker in Piazza Dante, which has stood there since the Second World War). They might even plant some rincospermum there. Will we all end up there, charging our phones? Or will we all end up in malls and shopping centres instead, like in Dubai? Shall we meet at the foot of the ‘air-conditioning’ tree, a fake tree (and therefore also at risk of being felled) that they wanted to erect in Rome’s ill-fated Piazza dei Cinquecento (a fake tree based on the principle of ‘adiabatic cooling’ using solar panels)? Who knows.

But perhaps, amidst longed-for fake trees and real trees cut down to the ground, the time has come to decide once and for all whether these trees, as Verdone said, are of any use to us or not. If we’ve decided that we don’t know how to look after them, that they’re a real nuisance, that they overshadow the architect’s ego and complicate the lives of the city councillors and the superintendent, then instead of making fake ones, let’s cover everything up, build a lovely technostructure, install some proper air conditioning – perhaps even across the whole city (starting, of course, with the suburbs). Centocelle: a widespread climate refuge. Centocelle meets Dubai. Just like in a Superstudio dream. 

However, the bioclimatic shelter isn’t the only buzzword. There’s also ‘depaving’. Depaving is brilliant. It’s even better. It has nothing to do with vaping, i.e. e-cigarettes. “Trees and plants can make an important contribution to reducing the impacts of extreme heat, which affects cities in particular. We are investing in depaving,” said Alfonsi. Depaving involves removing tarmac and replacing it with soil, making the ground permeable and breathable. However, as with the trees, Rome was already ‘devaped’ or ‘depaved’. There was no need to fell the trees and then create the shelter, nor to ‘devape’ or ‘depave’ it. With all the potholes there are, it’s the most ‘devaped’ or ‘depaved’ city in Europe, in the world. The most permeable and breathable. In the suburbs, and even in the centre – well, never mind.