Living Nature was a garden pavilion in which all four seasons were able to coexist simultaneously thanks to an innovative system for managing energy flows in a sustainable way. It was developed for Salone del Mobile in Piazza del Duomo, Milan’s central square, during Milan Design Week. The 500 square-meter, 5-meter high pavilion housed four natural climatic microcosms, immersing visitors in nature as they wandered through winter, spring, summer and autumn. Each season presented a different design theme, with furniture provided by well-known brands – living room for spring, picnic for summer, office for autumn, playroom for winter. Aside from the fun of both throwing snowballs and sun-tanning in the space of a few minutes, “Living Nature” also explored two crucial themes: the relationship between nature and the city, and the effects of climate change. The former is a recurring theme in Western history, from ancient Greece to Frank Lloyd Wright’s urban utopias. We asked ourselves: how can we bring nature back to the city, and in what form? A more urgent issue addressed was climate change. The pavilion pioneered an innovative energy management system for climate control: the plants in the pavilion were housed under a selective crystal membrane that dynamically filtered the sun based on input from light-reactive sensors, while above the pavilion, photovoltaic panels generated clean energy, providing the required energy to cool the winter area or heat the summer one.