11th International School
Awareness and Responsibility of Environmental Risk

Now in its tenth edition, the School started in 2008. It is dedicated
to graduate students and graduates in architecture, urban design,
planning, engineering, geography, geology, sociology,
environmental studies as well as business and political science.
The school gives an opportunity to argue on design and
environmental risk factors along with their management. While
working on a case study, students will be guided and supported by
an international and multidisciplinary team of experts and tutors.
The idea of the school derives from the believe that awareness
shall not be left aside by knowledge: to analyse, elaborate, reason,
decide and act, knowledge is an essential scientific presupposition.
To choose deliberately “what, where, why, when, for whom, and
how” we design is the basis of any design process.

Aims
The aim is to raise the awareness of design, management, and
planning issues regarding territories vulnerable to environmental
risks.
Case study // Topic
Pre-disaster planning and design are intrinsic to risk preparedness and risk
mitigation. As a result, so is „charting the path” (Harvey, 1973) or mapping
possible scenarios of social and spatial transformation of the urban areas, with understanding the nature of contemporary patterns of urban restructuring, and then, on that basis, analysing their implications for actions” (Brenner, Marcuse, Mayer, 2017) being the very first step. It seems impossible to re-build cities and villages in safer areas and displace entire communities. Hence, integrated programs and evacuation plans that have been applied so far, were and are based on soft rather than hard measures. Unfortunately, as far as high risk areas among which coastal ones are concerned, some extreme measures must be introduced,
too, in order to protect people from natural hazards.
Among the lessons learned from the 2011 Great Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami there is the one regarding anti-tsunami towers and buildings — a desperate measure to be applied when alternatives are lacking or all other measures fail. Is it possible, however, to build them without ruing the landscape? To avoid them turning into a sort of unfinished, obsolete version of Follies designed by Bernard Tschumi for the La Villete park in Paris in the 1980s? Is it possible to turn areas of low density and even lower quality into areas of both high density and high quality?
High and high-rise buildings are controversial and questionable as solution in the areas of high seismic risk, in both pre- and post-disaster context. The city of L’Aquila where the school will took place, is a good example — being rebuilt as it was, where it was, with only slightly a chance of not making ”all” the same mistakes again.
This summer school will be an opportunity to face the above-mentioned dilemmas under the supervision of experts in various fields among which meteorology, structural and hydraulic engineering, urban planning, architecture, and psychology.

6th Young Researchers’ Round Table

It is a conference and workshop for doctoral students, postdoctoral scholars and junior researchers intended an open forum where participants can discuss their interests, work, and plans.
There isn’t any thesis to agree or disagree with apart from general keywords of awareness, responsibility, environment, environmental risk, vulnerability, resilience and the general topic of the school to which the conference is the tribute, no rigid formula but a space where young researchers who share a common future can meet.
Deadline submission July 31, 2019, abstract acceptance and call for posters: August 05, 2019
Deadline poster submission and Authors registration: August 25, 2019
Deadline paper submission: 30 September, 2019

It is obligatory for the participants of the school to attend all the conference sessions