CALL - Cities in Action for Learning LAB

Seminar 🟡 Transformative Agencies in/for Contested Spaces #2 Envisioning Recovery

📍Spazio CRAFT, Building 11B - Campus Leonardo, Politecnico di Milano
💻 Online (link in bio)

The seminar explores recovery planning and presents the strategic and operative challenges of urban planning “compressed in time.” In contexts affected by large-scale destruction, particular significance is placed on the effort to (re)imagine future cities and territories amidst total uncertainty and the continuous evolution of conflict dynamics.

🤔 What should be preserved, and what should be rebuilt or “reinvented”? Which needs should be considered and prioritized? Whose knowledge should be included to support anti-fragile action? Which tools could be activated to mobilize resources and rebuild local (physical and relational) networks?

The seminar will reflect on these interrogatives, starting from the experience of the Ukrainian research and professional collective .ukraine.

Special guests: Marharyta Borysova and Anastasiia Popovych from .ukraine
In dialogue with: Valeria Fedeli, Barbara Piga, Nicola Colaninno, Alice Buoli, Maryam Karimi, Arxhenda Lipovica from .dastu.polimi.

👉 The event is part of the seminar series “Transformative Agencies in/for Contested Spaces”, curated by Maryam Karimi, Alice Buoli and me, and funded by .dastu.polimi

☀️ In the morning (9:30-11:00, Building 16B1.1) our guests will give a class to the students of the course « Fragility and antifragility in the spatial realm », hosted by Valeria Fedeli (slide 2)

PALIMPSEST consortium meeting in Pilsen: two days of exchange and inspiration ⭐

On January 29th and 30th, , represented by Grazia Concilio and Talita Medina, together with the partners, were hosted by colleagues from the , University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic. The consortium had the opportunity to explore the remarkable faculty building, a space specifically designed to support an innovative educational programme and approach, characterised by transparency, spatial fluidity, and a large central open area.

🏺 During the visit, participants attended the end-of-semester exhibition showcasing students’ work from various courses held in the building, including ceramics, fashion, audiovisual media, illustration, and more. The diversity and quality of the projects proved highly inspiring for all members, including creatives, technologists, communicators, and researchers, each engaging with the works from their own perspective.

🐟 Among the highlights of the event were the ceramic workshop led by Markéta Kalivodová, the student exhibition, and the presentation of a particularly inspiring project by the Czech partners: a series of bottles containing water collected from the four rivers that cross the city of Pilsen, sampled both in spring and within the urban context, accompanied by the results of water quality analyses.

Overall, the meeting represented two days of full immersion, exchange, and collaboration with the exceptional team.

How can artistic research and design practices help us rethink climate adaptation, landscape transformation, and energy transition from a place-based perspective? What role can local cultural practices play in generating shared knowledge around environmental change?

These questions framed the final event of the .jerez project where the coordination team took part in a moment that brought together three years of transdisciplinary collaboration.

Conceived as a single, articulated event, .jerez combined an exhibition and a collective performative moment to reflect on the territory of Jerez through artistic and design research. Originating from the artistic proposal of (Culturama), with curatorial support from , the project mobilised ceramics, viticulture, cante, emparrados (wine arbors), and the ritual of the zambomba to address pressing challenges such as climate adaptation, heat waves, and landscape transformation. 🍇

The exhibition, developed with the Municipality of Jerez, presented images, maps, diagrams, sketches, and material experiments documenting a long-term co-creation process involving artists, researchers, craftspeople, and local experts. This research was then activated through the zambomba climática, a collective and symbolic moment that marked the closure of a shared research journey connecting Jerez, Milan, and Łódź. 👩‍🎨🏺

👏 .jerez demonstrates how artistic research can operate as a relational infrastructure, capable of linking local knowledge and cultural practices with broader environmental and climatic questions.

Grateful to all those who made this collaborative process possible!

📷 ©

DesignResearch ClimateAdaptation Landscape Transdisciplinarity PlaceBasedResearch NEB