Resilience, sustainability and university campuses: concepts and inspirational guidelines for Mercat del Peix and La Ciutadella del Coneixement
This workshop is part of the Master’s Degree in City Resilience Design and Management curriqulum, from Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC), a programme directed by Lorenzo Chelleri, a fellow from the Fundació Bosch Aymerich (FBA).
The aim of this workshop is to support and rethink the new Mercat del Peix Campus development and management, toward a model of Sustainable and Resilient Campus, contributing to define further the vision for the Ciutadella del Coneixement future Knowledge District.
This means to provide inspirational examples, resilience principles for the design and management helping the new campus management team to understand how to move forward, from current projects to planning and strategies beyond the buildings for becoming a resilient and sustainable Campus model.
In particular, in order to do so, it will be of utmost importance to understand what exactly a “resilience and sustainable campus” should be, which are design and management principles of resilience and sustainability, and thus respond within a long term and integrated view to the: 1) climate emergency challenges, 2) the post-covid urbanism criteria, and 3) current justice and social inclusivity challenges. Most of the time, strong and normative concepts and values, such as sustainability or resilience, end up being applied in a poor and simplistic way, betraying their broad meanings and messages.
- How resilience should be applied within the planning, design and management of a Campus?
- How sustainability should be applied beyond its technological and design components, addressing the district scale, beyond the new campus buildings?
- How a campus could lead and contribute to a whole city district in order to boost culture, knowledge, quality of life and equity? And in the case of the Mercat del Peix Campus, how could it contribute to the implementation of the Knowledge District implementation?
Session 3 – Design principles for a sustainable campus
This Keynote is delivered by 2 speakers, offering 2 complementary presentations. Below the 2 abstracts and BIO
PART 1
The spatial dimension of sustainability will be at the focus of the presentation. We will explore how the campus setting – that is, open spaces and buildings, infrastructure and furnishings – can offer the university community opportunities for better lifestyles and behaviours and support the path to adaptable and resilient campuses. In particular, the integration of green solutions and new technologies spread across the campus can increase both sustainability and resilience, especially as regeneration strategies applied to established university contexts. In addition to the physical layout of the campus, its location (for example, urban or rural) plays an important role in the activation and deployment of exogenous resources to reduce the environmental impact and,
even more, in providing ecosystem services to the urban environment, thus helping to improve overall urban sustainability.
Speaker: Prof. Eugenio Morello
Bio
Eugenio Morello is Associate Professor in Urban Design at Polimi and coordinator and research scientist at the Laboratorio di Simulazione Urbana Fausto Curti, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (Dastu). Since 2017 he is the Rector’s Delegate for environmental sustainability and responsible for institutional projects towards a sustainable campus. He is the department scientific supervisor of the Horizon 2020 MSCA MultiCAST project led by Nicola Colaninno (2022-2025) on the topic of thermal-related urban climate analysis and simulation. He is the principal investigator of the European Horizon 2020 projects Clever Cities (2018-2023) and Sharing Cities (2016-2021) and the UIA project Air-Break (2020-2023). In these projects he is responsible for the citizen engagement strategy and co-creation pathways and activities. For the Department he is also leading the activities for the research projects Climate change and territory and Towards climate-proof landscapes for living and working, both funded by Fondazione Cariplo (2017/18; 2018/19) and aiming at initiating a path towards the construction of a resilient metropolitan area.
PART 2
Designing a campus today means designing a fundamental piece of the city. VIVIPOLIMI is a strategic project aimed at updating the quality of the work, research and teaching spaces of the Politecnico di Milano in an international logic that is increasingly open to confrontation between the university and the city. Improving the quality of the spaces on our Campus means increasing the quality of life of the neighbourhood that has hosted us for over 100 years. After years of punctual interventions, VIVIPOLIMI tries to give a unified design to the Campus, their history and their future. Studying and working at the Polytechnic is an element of pride for the entire polytechnic community. Living the Polytechnic is a life experience as well as an educational one. The VIVIPOLIMI group is made up of architects who work every day with passion and team spirit to provide the University with more liveable spaces and more in line with the needs and habits of students. In the wake of history and tradition, with a look at our history but above all towards tomorrow. VIVIPOLIMI tries to intercept the needs and spatial needs of the new generations.
Speaker: Prof. Emilio Faroldi
Bio
Emilio Faroldi (1961), architect and PhD, is Full Professor at Politecnico di Milano, where he carries out teaching and research activities dealing with issues related to the architectural project with particular interest in the relationships that exist between conception, design and construction of architecture. He organised conferences, training courses and international design seminars. Author of numerous publications, he has presided and coordinated, for over a decade, the degree courses in Architectural Science and Architectural Design at Politecnico di Milano. He has been Editor in Chief of the scientific journal TECHNE_Journal of Technology for Architecture and Environment, and he is Director of the Master in Sport Design and Management. Professor of the International Academy of Architecture since January 2017 and Vice Rector of the Politecnico di Milano.
