Exaptation: guiding the metamorphoses of our environment and actions

Last week COIMA celebrated its 50th anniversary by organizing “Inspiring Cities”, a forward-looking event focused on exploring the future of urban environments. This day-long conference, held at the Porta Romana Olympic Village construction site in Milan on October 10th, 2024, brought together architects, academics, and students from 13 Italian universities to discuss the evolving challenges cities face. 

Representing CZA, architect Cino Zucchi offered a series of reflections on the concept of “exaptation”—a guiding principle in an exploration of how cities and environments evolve. His intervention addressed the challenges and opportunities urban spaces encounter as they adapt to shifting technological, environmental, and social dynamics. 

“In Evolution and Bricolage, François Jacob employs the distinction made by Claude Levi-Strauss between the ideal figures of “engineer” and the “bricoleur” to look at natural evolution as a continuous metamorphosis of existing structures adapting to new needs. Years later, Stephen J. Gould and Elisabeth S. Vrba coined the term “exaptation” to define parts of organisms that over time take on roles that are completely different from the original ones. If the futuristic utopias of the last century were looking for perfect urban organisms, specifically designed on envisaged needs and ideal communities, today we can understand how the progresses of technics and information technology, environmental changes, values ​​and lifestyles of a continuously changing society constitute a system whose complexity cannot have univocal and “universal” answers. The relative inertia of the territories and cities that host our present and future lives require a way of thinking capable of joining together innovation, conservation and the reciprocal ability to adapt of existing spaces and new lifestyles.” 

Thanks to COIMA for organizing a conference so deeply focused on urban planning and the future of cities, contributing to a meaningful dialogue on the transformation of our urban environments.