Where the Disciplines Meet Lecture – October 2022

25 October, 17.30 (CET)
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MEDIAL ENVIRONMENTS. New generations of infrastructure.

Speaker: Stefano Tornieri, Università IUAV di Venezia

Discussant: Mark DeKay, University of Tennessee

General subject area: landscape ecology; landscape and community

Beside climatic drivers, other drivers such as technological innovation, economic growth and related land-use changes have direct impact on socio-ecological systems and their processes. The understanding of the changing nature of those drivers and their influence on the quality of the infrastructure space requires a new design approach.
The focus hypothesis of the lecture is that the infrastructural project, as a place of multi-disciplines discussion, must evolve with the complexities and indeterminacies of urban and environmental change. The typology of infrastructural project is the hybrid blue, green and grey network system, the integration between water resource management, rehabilitation and/or formation of ecological matrices and the built environment. Such integration is a precondition in practice, research and education development, where design, planning and engineering, environmental and political sciences must converge into new forms of infrastructure design inquiry.
Having the focus on the ground as resource and design space, Medial Environments aims at arguing the spatial, societal, economic and environmental role of new constructed ecologies as the most essential infrastructural strategy supporting earth systems rehabilitation and a diverse notion of urbanisation. Specifically Medial Environments will focus on agrifood production as a large-scale infrastructural project and as a strategy of carbon mitigation/ adaptation/ compensation along with the formation of economies that rely on the material stream’s management of these new ecological zones. The lecture will present some international case studies, on going design projects and a theoretical synthesis related.

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Bibliography

• Falkenmark, M., & Mikulski, Z. (1994). The Key Role of Water in the Landscape System: Conceptualization to Address Growing Human Landscape Pressures. GeoJournal, 33(4), 355–363.
• Klinger, D., & Naylor, R. (2012). Searching for Solutions in Aquaculture: Charting a Sustainable Course. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 37(1), 247–276. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-021111-161531
• Sukhdev, P. (2011). The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity. Zero Landscape. Unfolding Active Agencies of Landscape, GAM Architecture Magazine.
• Yu, K. (2014). Designing new Hydrological Infrastructure. Lotus International.

Stefano Tornieri (stornieri@iuav.it)
Master Degree in Architecture in 2010, Ph.D in architectural composition in 2015 at University Iuav of Venice. He has been Visiting Fellow at CEAU (study center architecture and urbanism) at FAUP University of Porto in 2014 and at Luleå University of Technology in 2022. Actually he is Research Fellow at IR.IDE (Infrastructure Research Integral Design environment) of University Iuav of Venice. His research focuses on productive landscapes and design scenarios along river deltas, lagoons and wetlands.
Within the professional activity he has been nominated at the EU Mies Van Der Rohe Award 2019 and curator of Grenada Pavilion at the 17th Architecture Biennale of Venice.

Mark DeKay (mdekay@utk.edu)
Mark DeKay is an architect and Full Professor at the University of Tennessee, specializing in sustainable design theory and tools. His works include Integral Sustainable Design: transformative perspectives and Sun, Wind, and Light: architectural design strategies, 3 rd edition, a classic climatic design resource. Mark teaches and lectures internationally on climatic design, education, architectural experience and integral sustainability. With his wife Susanne, he facilitates interdisciplinary teams using the integral research approach.