ISUP Doctoral School

Silvia Cipelletti
with Prof. João Nunes
2021-2025
 

The main thesis question is to investigate the morphology and characteristics of the cross-border territory as landscape category, deploying the audio-visual media as critical tool to analyse the district of Mendrisio as case study.
This project aims to conceive the border as an extended territory of interface, in alternative to its traditional representation and general understanding as line or barrier.

The aim of this doctoral research is to study the border landscape as territory and typology, deploying the audio-visual media as a critical tool to investigate the main environmental, cultural, and socio-economic factors that determine its morphology, characteristics, transformation, and development potential. A fundamental premise of this research is the focus on the gaze and perspective from which the studied phaenomenon is observed and analysed: the project aims to question both the notion of the border landscape and the way such landscape is perceived, documented, and therefore designed and governed. The choice was to locate the area of the Mendrisio district, chosen as case study, in the wider perspective of the Swiss and Alpine landscape, operating a comparative analysis with similar territorial realities. The focal thesis of this project is the conception of the border as an extended landscape of interface, in alternative to its traditional representation and general understanding as line or barrier.
The interruption of the continuity of a natural environment by the juridical apparatus of the frontier generates significant formal changes in the landscape, in addition to the different constructive elements adopted by urban design and transnational manmade infrastructure. Where most of the existing research in the field of landscape architecture focuses on the architectural apparatus of the frontier itself, the primary goal of this project is to trace and describe the wider impact of the frontier on the land across scales. The broadening of the portion of the landscape directly and formally affected by the presence of the border becomes evident only through a multi-scalar reading of the territory. The architectural practice of zooming into the closest details of the topography through the zenith scope or the map reveals an intrinsic feature of the borderline as a device endowed with scalar immunity. The choice to deploy different media such as on-site observation and audio-visual recordings is aimed at accessing a scale of ‘intimate proximity’ and a wider range of information, in order to identify the fractal properties of cross-border territorial dynamics and metabolisms. At different scales, the dimension of the border can be identified now with a line, now with a larger portion of territory, which includes and encompasses entities formally belonging to different states or regions, but which all participate in the dimension of a cross-border interface territory and take part into its peculiar characteristics and properties. 

Methodologies
Bibliographic research /  On-site research / Workshops and seminars / Audio-visual documentation
Interviews / Case study publications

Objective
To identify and manifest, through the production, recollection and analysis of audio-visual evidence, the material consequences of the frontier as a governance apparatus on a continuous landscape

Teresa Rosas da Silva Figueiredo Marques Pellegrini
Prof. João Ferreira Nunes (supervisor) + Prof. João Gomes da Silva (co- supervisor)
2020-2024
 

Can landscape architecture research through design(ing) cooperate to improve future river management and design?
Investigate if landscape architecture research methodologies and project perspectives can enlarge the existing set of rules guiding river renaturalization in Switzerland, and evaluate benefits of this wider multidisciplinary view in project results.

River renaturalization science evolved a lot in the past 30 years, following the growing concern for degraded river ecosystems. It increased further recently, with the evidence of climate disturbances, causing more frequent and devastating floods, heat waves and extended drought periods, that put at risk the quality and availability of freshwater resources for human communities. This discipline aims to repair anthropic rivers that were strongly altered and became oversimplified, impoverished environments, by recovering continuity along river networks, reconnecting riverbeds with floodplains and recreating fundamental habitats for healthier riverine landscapes. To achieve this complex task is fundamental a multidisciplinary view, that crosses knowledge from hydrology, fluvial geomorphology, ecology, social sciences, politics, just to name some. But is this just a scientific question or is it also an architectural problem? Riverine landscapes are among the most important human habitats, so the design of these environments is an extremely important architectural problem. In Switzerland, the practice of river renaturalization, as in many other countries in the world, is still struggling to construct an efficient disciplinary mix of knowledge, capable of facing the great complexity of river repair under changing climate scenarios, uncertainty and enormous economic efforts involved. Preliminary studies and projects are frequently designed by hydrologists and environmental engineers, with the help of fluvial ecologists. Landscape architects are not always part of this process and in many cases arrive in later phases of the project, just to improve the design for public space scopes. This PhD research wants to explore the possible consequences of a more transversal and active participation of landscape architecture in river renaturalization processes, and evaluate if it can have a positive impact on the management and design of future anthropic rivers. Landscape architecture methodological tools and project perspectives seem promising to enlarge the existing set of rules that currently guide river renaturalization preliminary studies and projects. Landscape analysis methodologies can improve preliminary studies that support these projects, because they construct a dynamic view in time and space that describes the unique biography of each river landscape, which is a necessary departure point for a good design of the future. Research through design methodologies are particularly adapted to deal with the uncertainty and complexity of river behavior under climate change. They permit the design of open adaptable projects that leave space to flexibility and unpredictability. To test this hypothesis, case study projects from Canton Ticino will be studied in detail and used as references to alternative projects drawn from landscape architecture methodologies. Critical review of both will be done with the use of interviews to experts and to people living in these landscapes.

Objective
are practical, focused in finding improvements in management and design tools. River renaturalization is a complex task that requires convergence of many specialistic knowledge and needs to deal with uncertain behaviors foreseen by future climate scenarios. Landscape architecture can combine earth sciences, ecology, social/cultural values, and architectural knowledge and synthesize them in projects. Projects are designed to accept change, according to the dynamic nature of landscapes. These intrinsic qualities have great potential to enlarge existing multi-disciplinary perspectives and contribute to improve management and design tools of future river landscapes.

Methodologies
bibliographic researcharchive researchfield researchinterviewslandscape analysiscase studiesresearch through designlandscape alternative futures

Julian Raffetseder
Prof. Dr. Sascha Roesler (Supervisor)
2021 - 2024

The research project investigates the role of collective urban and architectural form in the climate adaptation of cities. Vienna is projected to change its climate to the humid subtropical (Cfa) zone by 2050 and will be one of the cities most severely hit by future heatwaves due to its population density. Yet, its consolidated urban fabric carries significant potential for architectural climate adaptation and therefore serves as a test case.
While the current focus of urban climate adaptation on blue and green infrastructure often disregards future conditions of draught, the results of this research project highlight architectural techniques of urban climatization. Urban climates have a distinct quality exerted by their building fabric. The description of the “artificial” quality of the urban microclimate and the effect of built form was first laid out by Schmidt, Tollner and Steinhauser in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century. Their work partly served as the scientific basis for a beginning correspondence between Climatology and Architecture, making the urban climate a matter of design.

The thesis aims to renew this link by integrating current microclimatological knowledge, simulation tools, and climate practices in the design process. In continuation of evidence-based design methods developed by R. Knowles, V. Matus, and K. Steemers, the project seeks for architectural strategies of collective climate adaptation on three case study sites. Different adaptation scenarios are tested in an explorative  design research methodology. Employed tools include scenario building, computational climate simulations, comparative studies of future climate city analogues, and stakeholder workshops.
The causal relation between urban density and the urban heat island phenomenon leads to seemingly conflicting sustainability goals in cities. By developing architectural knowledge for urban-climatic design, the thesis aims at overcoming this contradiction to inform a new strategy of municipal thermal governance for the unprecedented shift of cities to a new climatic zone.
 

Aims
Defining the agency of architectural and urban form in the climate adaptation of three Vienna case study sites.

Methods
Scenario building /  Computational simulation /  Accesibility mapping /  Stakeholder workshops / Literature review

Cristina Roiz de la Parra Solano
Prof. Jonathan Sergison
Prof. Orsina Simona Pierini (co -supervisor)
2020-2025

The research investigates the emergence of new forms of living over a period of almost 20 years, from 1949 to 1968. It focuses on a selection of Spanish and Italian projects that can be understood as examples of experimental housing and the common themes that exist in these building cultures during this period. The dissertation will assess the specific historical and social conditions, the end of Italian Fascism, the ongoing Franco regime in Spain which continue to limit the exchange of information and the feverish period of reconstruction after World War II. The precise span of the study is defined by two key events in the history of Architecture. The V National Assembly in 1949 and the IX Triennale of 1951 in Milan, which had an important impact on the Spanish perception of international architecture. And how the 1968 marked the beginning of a different set of principles within the architectural discourse, the arise of social emancipation and request of civil rights were important to determine this turning point. A conversation that is based on a shared understanding of ways of living from the inside out, where the intricacies of the floorplan, the craftsmanship of joinery in doors and windows elements is treated as flexible elements tailored to the user. The question of ideas of domesticity is the core of the research and aims to reflect on contemporary dwelling and the shift in societal needs since the 1950s.The selection of case studies starts by considering 30 buildings and the work of 25 architects where there is an exploration on the domestic space. This research can be understood as a form of survey, in which drawings and photographs produced by the author become a crucial source material in developing the dissertation.

Objectives
To survey key case studies in detail in order to trace a network of relationships between them, providing a solid understanding of Spanish and Italian second post- war domestic architecture and its main characteristics, illustrated by different apartments. - To make use of drawing to communicate the ideas about the interior space, its spatial quality and materiality. - To open a conversation about domestic space as an image of society and how this has evolved in contemporary times. Investigating the wider effect of domestic architecture on contemporary housing can still be seen as being relevant and influential.

Methodology
Discourse analysis / Ethnographical research / Architecture analysis / Oral history / Drawing

Zeno Zanderigo
Joao Ferreira Nunes
2021-2025

The research explores the potential of interstitial spaces in the perspective of sustainable development of Alpine territories. An anti-fragmentary and multidisciplinary reading of the marginal landscape applied to planning allows highlighting opportunities for reuse, avoiding the consumption of new land. The work will be developed in three phases following the research-through-design approach.
In the human-made landscape we can speak of interstices for all those spaces we find at the margins of planned areas. If the territory can be read as a succession of built elements, the interstice represents the discontinuity between various elements. The interstice expresses the relationships between the built elements of the landscape and the city. This space has a passive function if one focuses on the “solids” (i.e., the built), but if one turns the point of view around, the interstice becomes a structure of the territory, the plot within which all the elements necessary for urban life are placed.
Looking at the development of the European landscape, it will become apparent that it is particularly important to address the issue of interstices in the Alpine context. In fact, in the narrow valleys of the Alps there is one of the highest rates of land consumption, with the abandonment of agricultural areas on the slopes and urban growth concentrated on the valley floor. From an initial general definition of interstices, we will then attempt to give a more specific definition of the situation of interstitial spaces in the valleys, with their peculiar characteristics of morphology, scale and biodiversity.
Finally the discoveries will be used in an architectural project to investigate specific situations in the territory of Canton Ticino. Developing an in-depth knowledge of interstices can help meet the densification and centripetal development requirements of the Federal Law on Spatial Planning and the Law on Territorial Development issued by the Canton of Ticino. The Swiss context, captured by the Federal Statistical Office with the land use survey of 1985-2009, highlights the expansion of industrial and commercial areas near the main motorway axes, a reduction in arable land of 5.4% due to the expansion of urban settlements on the valley floor and of forested areas on the slopes and at high altitudes. From this perspective, studying interstitial spaces and integrating them into urban development plans would play a significant role in reducing land consumption, in order to create implementation hypotheses for thriving spaces as outlined in the report Priority Themes for Swiss Sustainability Research.

The research will be published in the form of a monograph with a relevant sample project section.

Research through design /  Cartographic analysis / Bibliographical research / Workshops / Projects design analysis