OFFICINA* is a quarterly magazine that aims to communicate scientific research ouside the University: the final mission of OFFICINA* is to produce a theological transfer from University to companies and vice versa.
Since 2014, the magazine has published 17 issues, with over 200 articles written by more than 250 authors.
Since 2017 OFFICINA* has a scientific committee that carries out the articles blind peer review. The committee is made up of 21 Ph.D. from different Italian Universities and with different disciplinary skills. Indeed, fundamental to the editorial project is the interdisciplinarity approach that characterizes every issue of OFFICINA*.
OFFICINA* supports Venice Climate Lab since its beginnings, and some of the members of OFFICINA* assocciation are also founders of VCL.
OFFICINA*17 _ Water
Aware of the limits of growth exceeding (Meadows et al., 1972), in 2017 OFFICINA* chose to investigate the theme of global change related to climate change involving our planet and cities, focusing on technologies, systems, projects and innovations that try to answer to these phenomena. As starting point we choose the four elements (Air, Fire, Water and Earth), seen on the one hand as opportunities and resources, on the other hand as threats to humanity. Cross-cutting concepts to the four numbers will be those of sustainability, resilience, mitigation and innovation, understood as growth and development paradigms for a society that faces the new challenges imposed by global change.
Water, is the first element of the cycle of climate change proposed by OFFICINA * and it is an essential resource for life. Water is one of the most important indicators of this change for the absolute need that man has of it as The Who sang in Water, a piece conceived for the unfinished LifeHouse rock opera that, between 1970 and 1972, offered a post-apocalyptic vision of the World where, due to the overwhelming pollution, men are forced to live in “suits” (Lifesuits) that become the only means to allow a relationship between human and nature.
Today, climate and global changes also due to the human action make this element an increasingly rare and valuable resource but, simultaneously, also a threat difficult to control. The articles included in this OFFICINA* issue want to investigate precisely this dual condition where droughts and floods, water shortages and waste, water as source of life as well as the cause of death are intertwined in a unique reasoning that finds its focal point in the role of humanity and its ability to respond to these environmental changes. Therefore, the rainbow chosen by God in the Bible as the symbol of the alliance between Himself and humanity, can become a warning of the “new peace” between men and the World they live in.
Emilio