Deadline Call for applications: 3 giugno 2024

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WOW – Walking On the Wire is the seventh edition of the walking Summer School promoted by the Laboratorio del Cammino (LdC), an inter-university network of researchers and professionals who develops research and educational projects aimed at exploring the possibilities of walking in urban planning and design.

The aim of the Summer School is to understand the extent to which the "oblique gaze", the walking, seeing, listening and slowly entering places are essential ways to read and investigate the forms of living in the Adriatic city.

Accompanied by teachers, researchers and local actors who work in close contact with the territory and its transformations, students will be oriented to research and map the different ways of living that distinguish the Adriatic city, to elaborate a technically relevant description of the coexistences, opportunities and tensions-conflicts that characterize the forms and practices of living, hovering between intermittent use in space and time and dynamics of socio-spatial fragility exacerbated by climate change, and to outline possible strategies, scenarios and visions useful for addressing these issues.

The Summer School will take place from 26 August to 6 September 2024 and will consist of a walk that will cross the Adriatic city between Marche and Abruzzo, starting from Ancona and arriving in Pescara. Participants will be asked to investigate with their senses and experience the changes taking place in the territories crossed and to elaborate spatial narratives and possible design trajectories.

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THEME AND TERRITORY

The Adriatic city is a domestic territory, made of anonymous and widespread, individual and collective practices, which colonize the space in an incremental way, where the seasonal living of tourists, holidaymakers, agile workers in workation mixes in a capillary way with the resident one. If observed from the inside, crossed slowly, from the apparent chaos of repeated things - hotels, guesthouses, restaurants, bathing establishments, campsites, condominiums, shopping centers - a palimpsest of coexistence and rituals but also of tensions and conflicts emerges, of uses at the «own way of space», which have given shape to a territory with a fragmented profile, in some ways incomplete, which, despite the inertia, continues to transform.

The Adriatic city is an intermittent territory, made up of discontinuities and fragments. A "doubled" city where the intermittences are spatial and temporal. The spatial ones can be traced back to the articulation of the settlement fabric: the large and medium-sized coastal cities, places of services and commerce, are accompanied by many small inhabited centers, fine-grained settlements where the single/two-family house isolated on a plot – often accompanied by vegetable gardens, garages, warehouses, sheds – is the prevailing trait of living that is at the same time adaptive and opportunistic. A settlement fabric where there are still large urban voids that have now been re-appropriated by animal and plant species: unbuilt lots, abandoned areas, pending state-owned areas, ruined farmhouses, uncultivated agricultural areas, the legacy of a sharecropping past that coexists and contrasts with the forms of production of the territory driven by the tourist economy. The temporal one concerns the rhythms of living in the Adriatic city, a territory with strong seasonality which during the summer months triples its resident population and sees spaces and facilities used which remain empty in the rest of the year. The intermittency concerns both the short and the long time: chalets that become discos at night, car parks that become amusement parks during the weekend, and then industries, homes, collective services, now abandoned following the end of a growing season and the changing needs of local communities, which are also experiencing shrinkage and ageing. It is also a form of living that causes shifts and substitutions, such as those populations (for example university students) who in the summer months give their place to tourists and families on holiday, in rented apartments which are transformed into more profitable guesthouses and B&Bs for the owners. 

The Adriatic city is also a fragile territory, increasingly exposed to the effects of climate change. Like other maritime contexts, it suffers exposure to coastal erosion, the rise in sea level and, consequently, the retrenchment of the beaches, the retreat of the coastline and the rise of the salt wedge - a phenomenon which compromises the use of groundwater for agriculture, livestock or domestic uses. Fragility also has repercussions on the state of health of coastal and marine ecosystems, damaged by the rapid change in the climate context and by the pressures of predatory tourism which continues to shrink state-owned areas and protected habitats, deteriorating natural capital and biodiversity.

Last but not least, fragility also takes on a social dimension: the space dedicated to seasonal residents and tourists is used to stem demographic emergencies, as in the case of the relocation of some communities from the Apennines to the coast following the 2016 earthquakes, or it is progressively characterized by processes of segregation and marginalization that transform the original tourist destination of entire neighborhoods and building complexes - of which the Hotel House in Porto Recanati is one of the most representative cases. These reconverted spaces are crossed by various forms of social injustice, hardship and precariousness, but in some cases they have also become arenas of dialogue for the exercise of new spaces of citizenship thanks to the civil society engagement.

The Summer School aims to investigate the forms and the practices of living in the Adriatic city, to produce a technically relevant description of the coexistences, opportunities and fragilities-tensions-conflicts that the ways of living and the different articulations assume in space and time, in relation to the impact of the tourist economy and the consequences of climate change, and to outline possible visions, strategies and design trajectories useful for addressing these problems. Along the way, the group will observe the forms of coexistence between the different forms of living, and inhabitants, of the Adriatic city and the relationships that are built between these and non-human beings in coastal and marine habitats. Particular attention will be oriented to interact with local institutions and communities and share with them the ongoing results of the Summer School in order to convey collective learning processes and stimulate, through inedited images and narratives, dynamics of change for the Adriatic city.

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PROGRAM

Two days of training are planned before the start of the walk, one remotely and one in-person. These will offer participants the knowledge and tools useful for carrying out the Summer School activities. Participation in the two days of training is mandatory. The first training day will be held on the afternoon of Monday 21 July on the Zoom platform. The in-person training day will be held on Monday 26 August in Ancona, at the City Hall.

A seminar is planned on methodological issues related to doing planning on the move, a communication on the territory crossed by walking and on its planning framework, and an initial discussion with the participants, in order to return objectives and methods of carrying out of work.

The Summer School will take place from 27 August to 6 September 2024 and will consist of a walking itinerary from Porto Recanati (MC) to Pescara, stopping in Civitanova Marche, Porto S. Giorgio, San Benedetto del T., Martinsicuro, Pineto, Roseto degli Abruzzo. Every day the group will walk a distance of between 10 and 20 kilometers to reach the next stop where it will spend the night.

A final Study Day is scheduled for Saturday 7 September 2024 in San Benedetto del Tronto (AP) at the URDIS campus of the University of Camerino to present the outcomes of the Summer School and evaluate the results achieved. Participation in the Study Day is mandatory for the purposes of awarding credits. The results of the Summer School will be published on the website of the Laboratorio del Cammino and a selection will be subject to publication.

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HOW TO PARTICIPATE

The Call for participants of the Summer School is open from May 3 to June 3, 2024. It is addressed to students from the undergraduate and master degree courses in: Territorial, urban and landscape-environmental planning; Urban planning; Architecture; Geography and territorial sciences; Urban Design & Landscape Architecture; Building engineering and related courses, from the partner universities of the Summer School: LAUD/Bilkent University, Politecnico di Torino, Politecnico di Milano, Università degli Studi di Camerino, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Università degli Studi della Basilicata, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Università degli Studi di Parma, Università degli Studi di Trieste, Università degli Studi del Molise, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Università degli Studi di Pavia.

Students from other universities can also apply. However, their acceptance will be subject to restricted availability. The maximum number of students admitted will be 30.

To apply, students should send by June 3, 2024 via email to laboratoriodelcammino@gmail.com an academic curriculum vitae, a motivation letter and a portfolio with a selection of projects.

Acceptance of the application will be communicated by the LdC organizers by June 20, 2024.

During the Summer School, participants will have to prepare, in groups, an instant report in a format of their choice, and a vertical A1 format diary map to report the outcome of the research and activities conducted. The groups will have an inter-university character, i.e. they will be made up of students from different universities in the network.

At the end of the Summer School, participants from LdC partner universities will be recognized between 3 and 6 credits (ECTS) (depending on the study plan of the university to which they belong) assigned on the basis of the elaboration of the report and diary-map, evaluated by the LdC Scientific Committee during the final Study Day of the Summer School, scheduled for September 7, 2024 at the URDIS teaching campus of the University of Camerino in San Benedetto del Tronto.

Each group of students will be supported by two mentors who will offer support to the development of their work.

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HOW MUCH DOES IT COST

Participation in the Summer School is subject to payment, to be made at the time of registration, for overnight stays and the rental of a van with driver for the transport of luggage. A rough estimate of the aforementioned expenses is equal to 175 euros per person. The trip to Ancona and from San Benedetto del Tronto is at the expense of each participant. During the walk, the group will spend the night in camping tents in public spaces or in services granted by the local administrations, hostels, campsites or accommodation facilities chosen for affordability. Participants will be required to have a spirit of adaptation and a sense of sharing, while respecting individual values. Most of the meals will be prepared by the group itself based on a common fund collected at the beginning of the Summer School directly by the organizers.

 

For information, please send an e-mail to laboratoriodelcammino@gmail.com. 

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The Summer School is promoted by:

Laboratorio del Cammino – Associazione di Promozione Sociale

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Dipartimento di Scienze, Progetto e Politiche del Territorio (DiST), Politecnico di Torino

Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano

Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Architettura, Università degli Studi di Trieste

Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Architettura (DIA), Università degli Studi di Parma

Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Architettura (DICAr), Università degli Studi di Pavia

Dipartimento di Architettura (DA), Università degli Studi di Bologna

Dipartimento di Architettura (DiDA), Università degli Studi di Firenze

Scuola di Architettura e Design e Scuola di Scienze e Tecnologie, Università degli Studi di Camerino

Dipartimento di Bioscienze e Territorio, Università degli Studi del Molise

Dipartimento di Architettura (DiARCH), Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II

Dipartimento di Culture Europee e del Mediterraneo (DiCEM), Università degli Studi della Basilicata

Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Ambientale e Architettura (DICAAR), Università degli Studi di Cagliari

Dipartimento di Architettura (DARCH), Università degli Studi di Palermo

Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design (LAUD), Bilkent University

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EQuiStiamo Associazione di Promozione Sociale – Progetto Vaghe Stelle

Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti (AASO)

Progetto Fiori

Ikonemi Centro indipendente fotografia di paesaggio

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Organizing Committee

Guido Benigni, Daniele Cinciripini, Luca Lazzarini, Serena Marchionni.

 

Scientific Committee

Cristiana Rossignolo (DiST/Politecnico di Torino), Marco Mareggi, Chiara Merlini, Andrea Rolando, Luca Lazzarini (DAStU/Politecnico di Milano), Filippo Schilleci e Annalisa Giampino (DARCH/Università di Palermo), Anna Maria Colavitti e Sergio Serra (DICAAR/Università di Cagliari), Chiara Rizzi e Maria Valeria Mininni (DiCEM/Università della Basilicata), Massimo Sargolini e Flavio Stimilli (Università di Camerino), Elena Mucelli e Stefania Rossl (DA/Università di Bologna), Maria Rita Gisotti (DiDA/Università di Firenze), Michele Zazzi e Barbara Caselli (DIA/Università di Parma), Elena Marchigiani e Sara Basso (Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Architettura/Università di Trieste), Andrea Membretti e Roberto De Lotto (DICAr/Università di Pavia), Maria Federica Palestino e Gilda Berruti (DiARC/Università di Napoli Federico II), Luciano De Bonis (Dipartimento di Bioscienze e Territorio/Università degli Studi del Molise), Hatice Karaca (LAUD/Bilkent University), Daniele Cinciripini e Serena Marchionni (Ikonemi), Daniela Allocca (Progetto Fiori), Marcella Turchetti (Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti), Pierangelo Miola (EQuiStiamo/Progetto Vaghe Stelle).

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