Where the Disciplines Meet Lecture – September 2022

27 September, 17.30 (CET)

(Un)certain lines and landscapes. Marginal coastal landscapes in the climatic crisis

Speaker: Laura CIPRIANI, TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment

Discussant: Antonio LONGO, Politecnico di Milano

General subject area: Landscape Design through Research

Due to the climatic crisis, coastal areas on the planet will face an uncertain future. If thematic literature and projects have mainly focused on coastal lines facing large cities worldwide, marginal coastal landscapes, mainly agricultural with low levels of urbanization, are partly neglected in the debate.
This contribution intends to reflect on the (un)certain marginal landscapes and lines of Northeast Italy. This territory – from Marano Lagoon to the Po River Delta – and its people are facing an uncertain future, while currently wrestling with a latent climatic, economic-productive and social crisis. Eustatism, subsidence, soil erosion, saltwater intrusion, industrial and agricultural water pollution, dying economic activities testify to a territory in the throes of long-term repossession by the sea. Which design interventions, tools, and methods can be implemented and used in this state of uncertainty?

Bibliography

Cipriani, L. (2020), ‘Scenarios for the Polesine, the Po River, and its delta – Italy’, in T. Fisher, B. Orland, C. Steinitz, The International Geodesign Collaboration. Changing Geography by Design, ESRI Press, Redlands, California, pp. 54-55.
Cipriani, L. (2019), (Fr)agile terra. Paesaggi di crisi e possibilità. 01 La bassa friulana, Università Iuav di Venezia, Venice.
Cipriani, L. (2017), Isole di possibilità. Venezia e la città laguna. Islands of possibilities. Venice and the lagoon city, Aracne editrice, Rome.

Speaker

Laura Cipriani is an assistant professor at TU Delft. She has taught for a decade landscape architecture and landscape urbanism at IUAV, Politecnico di Milano, National University Singapore, Venice International University, and the University of Padua. She holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Architecture from IUAV (Hons 2001), a Master in Design Studies in landscape and urban studies from Harvard Design School (Hons 2004), and a Ph.D. in Urbanism from IUAV (2008). In 2010 she was awarded the EU Marie Curie research grant (ass. prof. level), and since 2014 she has had the Italian Associate Professorship title. In 2008 she founded Superlandscape, a landscape, and urban design office.

Discussant

Antonio Longo is an architect and urban designer. He is an associate professor of Urban Planning at Politecnico di Milano where he directs the Master‘s Degree Course in “Landscape Architecture Land Landscape Heritage.” His work is focused on the relationship between landscape and urban design. Since 2001 he has coordinated numerous applied research and publicly funded projects concerning the processes of land and landscape transformation and management and the relationship between landscape and infrastructures.