TOPIC

For the Fifth edition of the workshop, the Organization team has chosen an ambitious theme that builds on these objectives. The aim is to examine the landscape through the lens of conflict, challenging the way we interact with it and questioning the practices of place-making on land typologies that have complex and contested narratives and histories. This includes areas of great significance, as well as those subject to issues such as extraction, social, cultural, or political matters and resistance. The Atelier’s leader of this 2024 edition will guide the students to take a critical look at how we describe and interpret the places where conflict happens.

The perception that occurs within a contested land is a sort of dissonance, to encounter elements that seem out of place or that do not fit in with their environment. This effect is often caused by social, cultural and ecological dynamics, which can create places with disturbing beauty, an insidious charm or an attractive toxicity. These areas are different from other contexts due to the type of resources, both material and immaterial, that they contain, or because of unique morphological or environmental conditions that make them pockets of encounter, clash and overlap of complex dynamics. They are capable of generating local transformations that can have an impact on a vast geographical scale.

Conflict arises in these areas when the cross-over or forced proximity between jarring cultural or environmental systems produces alienating effects. For instance, the marble quarries, like the ones in Carrara, are world-renowned. These quarries sculpt the mountain, which not only significantly alters the area’s appearance and economy but also has an impact on water pollution and deforestation on its slopes. We could also refer to places such as borders, where imaginary lines modify social, cultural and environmental conditions, creating places of hand-to-hand battle or, on the contrary, of stalemate, no-man’s land.

In order to envision a design proposal that can arise from the dynamics of exploitation and domestication, the approach encourages to review the relationship with resources and restore meanings and independence to sites that hold strong symbolic relevance. Through the implementation of a project, we can find balance and rethink disputed plots as opportunities to challenge biases, create new narratives, and test creative designs.

The objective is not a surrender, but rather reaching a truce where we don’t seek the narcotic pacification of conflicts. The contested landscape is understood as a space where events can greatly alter environments and their ecologies, where the project should act as a tool to support, control, and encourage negotiations between various factors.

“Crossings” is a trigger intended to suggest overlapping, hybridization and integration between disciplinary fields and approaches looking for a mediation.

The team also attempt to synthesize – without claiming to exhaust the possibilities of interpretation and without placing limits on other “intersections” – the types of conflict and intersection dividing them according to some perspectives that concern different disciplines and imaginaries. The following areas of investigation can serve as a guide or inspiration for the workshop’s Atelier leaders and students in navigating this topic.

1 | Culture Crossings Land

Where the cultural value of a place is closely linked to historical or cultural events of an exquisitely human nature, linked to specific events or specific ethnic groups, often minorities.

2 | Resources Crossing Land

Where the presence of raw materials or the morphological qualities of a place present characteristics that lend themselves to extraction.

3 | Toxicity Crossings Land

Where Environmental disasters left visible marks on the environment, creating new habitats that can be both beautiful and hazardous. This section can also include places that are becoming toxic due to human activities, such as the Po Valley, or areas where natural conditions pose a threat to human life.

4 | Infrastructure Crossings Land

Where large-scale construction projects have been realized and are producing morphological and structural modifications, erasing, diverting and relocating habitats and ecological corridors.

5 | Wildlife Crossings Land

Where “nature”, taking back its own space, also claims its own hunting territories, often in conflict with modern leisure practices. From hunter to pray.

During the Landscape Of[f] Limits workshop, students will have the unique opportunity to work closely with an Atelier leader able to unbox this complex theme. This collaboration will allow students to expand their personal design toolbox by applying new and innovative methods and knowledge to their work. The result is an intensive experience that will challenge students to think outside the box and take risks through their designs.

To further enrich this experience, the organization has invited internationally renowned academics, researchers, and architects to give lectures throughout the program. These lectures will provide students with a broader perspective on design and help them understand the role that design plays in shaping the environment.

By daring to cross the line between ecology, cultural backgrounds, and architectural practice, each Atelier will develop a set of innovative design proposals pushing the limits of how we perceive contested landscapes.

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Caorso nuclear power plant. A contested case study

Ex Centrale Nucleare di Caorso (SOGIN SpA), vista esterna.
Fonte: Sogin.it

Caorso nuclear power plant and its surroundings are topical challenges to design a regeneration process oriented to integrate landscapes and infrastructures, natures and communities, within an approach based on crossings and interactions.
On the Po River banks, a paradoxical and contested environment is the result of the nuclear plant construction, its sudden closing and the current decommisioning. The decommissioning process of the Caorso nuclear power plant, which began in 2001 and has reached an advanced stage in terms of decontamination and plant safety interventions, is now entering a phase aimed at the redevelopment and enhancement of the site as part of a Strategic Vision for the Po River, an action promoted by the Emilia-Romagna Region with the involvement of the territories: local authorities, citizens, protected areas, companies.in collaboration with different local stakeholders.

A new strategic vision for the fluvial landscape sounds unavoidable in a post-industrial scenario involving new permeabilities, porosities and vocations for the area.
The workshop is the occasion to research about conditions and opportunities considering the great potential of the site in terms of ecological processes and biodiversity.
LOL students and design groups are called to imagine a possible future for Caorso, recovering traces and identities, healing fragilities and wounds, building surfaces and vegetations, for a new social and physicial cohesion.