Global Shading Day: March 21, 2025

Created by the European Solar Shading Organization - a nonprofit that supports the EU's ambitious energy-efficiency goals - Global Shading Day reaches out to individuals and communities to remind them of the importance of solar shading in the context of climate change. The benefits of shading in a changing climate and an overheating planet make it possible to reduce energy use and emissions, hand in hand with improving comfort and well-being for people. This means intervening in the relationship between supply and demand, researching production, service supply chains, and indoor/outdoor space design. It is a reorientation that changes how public and private living and working environments are used. The solutions deployed with blinds, facades and pergolas, and the virtuosity in their operational management, have been shown to intervene in energy consumption, improve thermal comfort, and reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. For some time now, the world of solar shading has been looking at the potential of textile innovation, its inherent peculiarities, and the need for conscious design to build more sustainable cities. Strictly technical motivations are flanked by design potential that has yet to be explored, and new ways to manage climates in buildings.

“The future of architecture passes through light, flexible and adaptable solutions. Shade is a resource, and we are committed to redesigning how to interpret it," explains Alberto Fiorenzi, founder of i-Mesh.

Designing shade.

The Conference Hall built for a major company active in the infrastructure sector is an indoor project consisting of a system of double curtains made with i-Mesh, created with advanced ventilation control systems that contextually fulfill the decorative and bioclimatic functions using specific energy balancing and thermal comfort features. The screens therefore improve environmental comfort in working spaces and reduce energy consumption. It is a solution consistent with the building designed to achieve the highest levels of LEED-certified environmental sustainability, where every element of the construction was designed to optimize logistics, eco-sustainability, and short-, medium- and long-term maintenance.

The Pergola Life Module Project, located in the village of Piglio, is designed to be a functional landmark in the historic center. The modular membrane made with i-Mesh is integrated into the village as a welcoming element of sophisticated and contemporary design. A place for tourists and citizens, the holistically developed project considers aesthetics, functionality, and community well-being. Beyond the idea of the square as a static and flat place, toward a vision of public space formed by dialogues and connections between art, tradition, nature and community. This outdoor project highlights urban design and the integration of nature and architecture in a context of flexible, temporary and sustainable usability. This virtuous synthesis of form, function, and meaning within historic heritage has been awarded numerous prestigious awards, from the Milan Triennale to the Biennale of Public Space in Rome, to the ADI Design Index.

Designing shade is thus the frontier, designing it in its dynamic relationship with natural and artificial light in relation to the many influences it exerts with respect to the use of space and context, sociality, and environmental impacts: inescapable.