Last night my friend Paul and I had an incredible five course meal at a nearby restaurant that offered several items from the local area. It's amazing that five courses made up of very small portions can fill you up, but it did. And did I say that the food was incredible? Just goes to show that local and fresh is the best way to go. With Italy being the home of the slow food movement, I figure I might as well make the most of it. After dinner, Paul and I spent a couple hours walking around central Turin visiting some of the sites, but more importantly trying to walk off the very filling meal. As often happens to Americans, we were blown away by the amazing architecture and bountiful history in the city. For example, we visited a small piece of the original wall protecting Turin during Roman times, dating back over 2000 years.
This morning, I had the honor of meeting Luigi (Gino) Bistagnino and Pier Paulo Peruccio in the Department of Architecture and Industrial Design at the Turin Polytechnical Institute. The department is located in the breathtaking Valentino Castle along the river PO in Turn. I can't even imagine trying to do work in the building, it is so beautiful. Gino and Pier Paolo are very involved with sustainable design work in Italy and internationally and are part of a sytems design Masters program that focuses on sustainable systems in industrial design. After some great discussion on their efforts and state of sustainable design in Italy, Pier Paolo gave a copy of his book on design in the Piemonte area that included a sustainable design project in Korea and a copy of Gino's book "Design con un Futuro". Apparently, I just missed Janine Benyus, founder of the biomimicry movement, who had lectured the previous Sunday. Pier Paolo also pointed me to a great company based in Novara, Novamont. Novamont has been working with bioplastics since 1990.
Later, I came across a great children's museum on environmental issues, Museo A come Ambiente, and on my way back to the hotel from the days events, I picked up the latest issue of Natural Style, an Italian magazine for "the woman who has chosen a new lifestyle: that natural one".
Supper was filled with another five course meal that would have made the slow food movement folks quite proud of me. We dined (I can truly call it that) at the famous Il Cambio, a restaurant that has been serving Turin's citizens and tourists since the 1700s. As usual, I tried to keep all my slections local. Not being a food critic, I cannot put worthy words forth about how wonderful everything was. The service was even better though. And eating in a restaurant that has existed for two hundred years...priceless.
