The environmental awareness that we have been maturing in recent years makes it necessary to rethink architectural design, especially when it has to be integrated into natural contexts that are little man-made, delicate, and of high landscape value. The union of composition and sustainability, aesthetics and performance, requires a high threshold of attention on every aspect of architectural development, from the choice of materials, to the technologies applied to the building, from the geomorphological and botanical analysis of the area to the study on transportation and installation of the building elements.

Looking at a site with an eye and designing in a conscious manner: this is the approach promoted by the "Architecture for the Landscape" course organized by YACademy, an institute of higher education based in Bologna. The postgraduate course is aimed at young architects who want to enter the international design scene with the right background between knowledge and experience.

For the next training cycle, to be held from 18 September to 24 November 2023, YACademy partners Franchi Umberto Marmi, a leading international company in the processing and marketing of Carrara marble. FUM and YACademy share a vision of architecture that focuses on respect for place and the environment. Together they are proposing "Carrara Community Quarry," a design workshop investigating the reuse of a disused quarry in the Carrara marble basin, which will be coordinated by Architect Patrick Lüth of Snøhetta.

The training will include visits not only to Carrara's marble quarries, but also to various socially and culturally significant places in order to gather as many insights as possible for subsequent project phases. They will be confronted with the places where Michelangelo and Canova personally went to choose the marble blocks to carve. These spaces can be rethought and find a new meaning of being. They can be sites of new interactions between man and nature.

This course is part of a rich calendar of appointments through which Franchi Umberto Marmi develops its corporate Academy: a project dedicated to training and the transmission of its knowledge and passion nurtured for marble for more than fifty years now.

According to Bernarda Franchi, Vice President and CEO of FUM, the course is a confirmation of the company's commitment to the territory and its community: "We believe a lot in this project thanks to which young people are entrusted with the study on the regeneration of the disused quarry at the foot of the Bridges of Vara. We want to project the image of our territory into the future thanks to this project."

Alessandro Cecchini, president of YAC and director of YACademy expresses all his enthusiasm for the collaboration: "Franchi Umberto Marmi has given us the opportunity to realize a dream that YACademy had been cultivating for some time: the quarries of Carrara represent one of the most significant scenarios of anthropic-natural mixture in the world. Working in such a context will not only provide an extraordinary opportunity for growth for dozens of young people of international extraction, but a concrete opportunity for research and reflection to advance a culture of integration between artificial and natural landscapes, bringing the best minds in the world to interact with a landscape-industrial legacy of immeasurable value."