Sustainability Defined

©2021 Life Positive Design - Pillars

I was born in Italy with the privilege of being regularly exposed to human-created beauty, layered in details of jewelry and paintings, in delicious food, and urban landscapes. 

Architecture was my natural choice to design beautiful spaces for humanity while expressing creatively the synthesis of function, materials, and form. In 1996 I joined Starbucks and I fell in love with retail brands. Starbucks at Disney Paris was a milestone in my career and their first LEED Platinum certified store: it opened its doors in 2009 and sealed my lifetime commitment to sustainability. 

Sustainability is a powerful word. It grounds humanity to a shared agenda of interconnected possibilities. I like to think of it first and foremost in ethical terms. Two powerful thoughts are guiding our Life Positive Design approach: “create conditions that are conducive to life”*, to all forms of life, in all ecosystems on Earth with the commitment of “being good ancestors” as my dear friend Daniel Kinzer has taught me. Within this ethical framework, endless design solutions and processes can develop, from resilient, to regenerative, ultimately to flourishing when eventually humanity poetically touches the ground lightly. This sustainability brings ethical depth to designs that continue to result from a beautiful synthesis of form, function, materials, and now belonging in place with positivity.

*quoted from the work of Dr. Dayna Baumeister and Janine Benyus, Biomimicry 3.8, and Biomimicry Institute.