Vaia News

The VAIA Cube imperfetto is the full expression of our vision. It embodies a radical approach to the circular process of raw material recovery, which aims at making full use of "waste". Only in this way can we fulfil the desire that nothing be left behind.  Logs felled by the Vaia storm in the most inaccessible areas are exposed to the elements for prolonged periods, causing blue-green stains to appear in the wood fibre. We have embraced these imperfections because we believe they are an...

Paolo Kovatsch is the technical manager of the Provincial Forestry Agency of the Autonomous Province of Trento, and leads the recovery and restoration actions of the local public woods affected in 2018 by the storm Vaia. We have interviewed him to take stock of the situation on the territory, two years after the event. Trentino 1966-2018: what similarities? In 1966 Trentino was hit by weather phenomena comparable to those of Vaia in 2018. In a beautiful video shot in Cadino, near the Manghen...

Dear Vaiers, 365 days present too many frames to behold them all in a single glance. Yet, if the year in question is 2020, it is likely that memory has deliberately erased several portions of a year we all wish to put behind us. Nevertheless, this is for VAIA a year to remember. Since moving its first steps in October 2019, the startup has come a long way and blown out its first candle. In this short article, we want to relive with you the main stages of this crazy 2020. And it's Forbes time...

The destinies of VAIA and of the Italian band Eugenio in Via Di Gioia could not have crossed paths in a more auspicious way. On 26 September 2019 the “Eugenii” (plural of Eugenio) have issued Lettera al Prossimo, a digital platform inspired by the homonymous track from their album Natura Viva, with a fundraising campaign for the replanting of the Paneveggio forest, in Trentino (Italy). Just two weeks earlier, on 12 September 2019, VAIA was formally born with the aim of giving new life to those...

It was planned to be the day of sustainability, design, environment and territory. And so it was, despite the new restrictions that have once again confined us to the screens. We blew out our first candle by hosting top-level speakers, who gave us valuable accounts of the issues that revolve around the world of VAIA. A day dedicated to the community, to unite around a new vision of the future in these difficult times, and to seek together outlooks that are up to today's challenges.  The three...

"I could hear the noise of logs breaking, of trees falling around me. It sounded like the mountain was about to collapse." The Vaia storm continues to accompany us through the marks left on the Alpine arc. Those days at the end of October 2018 remain etched in the memory of those who experienced it – like our Federica, who remembers well that chilling sound of falling trees, in the woods adjacent to her home. It is an event that has received a fair amount of attention over the past two years,...

From 17 to 19 July 2020 the VAIA team ventured into the wild Lagorai mountain chain, which separates Valsugana from Val di Fiemme, where we planted 500 trees just under three months ago. It was a way of reminding ourselves who we are and where we come from. Crossing the areas hit by the storm was particularly significant at a time like this, fresh from the peak of the health emergency and spectators of an economic crisis that is calling us to rise up and reinvent ourselves.  What follows is...

In the last article, we stopped at the gradual abandonment of the Charters as a means of safeguarding the woodland commons in the Trentino Alps. As evidence of the void left by those ancient institutions, the periods following their abolition saw an unprecedented impoverishment of the provincial forests. Although it was mostly due to legitimate social needs, this phenomenon destructured the main characteristics of a balanced ecosystem, reducing the woody mass, the humid layer, the faunal...

Until last year, only one woman had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. Among Elinor Ostrom's several merits, she overturned a widely held view in academic circles, namely that the collective use of natural resources leads to their inexorable destruction. Ostrom's turning point is rooted in the testimony of age-old customs, and one example belongs to the region of Trentino, Italy. The tragedy of the commons Think of a fishing basin, a resource freely accessible to anyone endowed with a...

Recent months’ developments are testing our most ingrained habits, along with the production systems we rely on to provide for our needs and desires. The phenomenon, which had been announced by some, has lashed the world at high speed. Of the origins and potential causes of COVID-19 (acronym for COronaVIrus Disease 19) that have been floated in the last weeks, amid the incessant rhythm of daily bulletins, you probably have lost track already.  It is not easy to pinpoint the root cause of a...