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PREMISE
The Architectural and Urban Design disciplinary approach to the processes of modification of the territory,
the landscape and the city, in the peculiar frame of doctorate aims to provide training courses and processes
which will be rooted in an incessant and multidisciplinary intersection and that will share specific and
innovative objectives.
The Architectural and landscape design, throughout a dynamic of hypotheses and verifications, has a
straight relationship with the ability to understand places and contexts and with the predisposition to grasp
the most urgent changes of our era, which challenge the epochal turn of the “ecological transition”.
The ecological transition will be the main framework where to face the issues that our era of climatic, energy,
and economic transformations address to Architectural and Urban Design, to identify peculiar design
approaches oriented to improve the quality of dwelling and the enhancement of the contexts, which are
cultural and economic assets of primary importance for a country of ancient settlement tradition like ours.

GENERAL RESEARCH TOPICS
According to the issues of the Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza (PNRR) - with particular regard to
those related to "Public Administration" [PA] and "Cultural Heritage" [PC], within 3 of the 6 "missions"
provided by the Ministerial Decree n. 351 (1. Digitization, innovation, competitiveness, culture and tourism;
2. Green revolution and ecological transition; 3. Infrastructures and sustainable mobility) - the following
general themes are identified. They will be further qualified within the study, investigation and research
boundaries of the Doctorate, which will intend Architectural design as a research tool, to define interpretative
results and forms of transformative knowledge in order to propose some guidelines of general value, also
with reference to relations with the Public Administration:
1. the ecological transition intended as an architectural transition, or rather as the attitude of Architectural
and Urban Design to read and interpret the social, energy and climatic demands of the communities and to
expand its statutes by integrating them with contemporaries up-to-date and in-depth knowledges and needs.
2. the sustainability of dwelling and of the recovery processes of the pre-existing buildings.
3. the enhancement and recovery, from an architectural point of view, of the historical, artistic and
environmental cultural heritage, aiming to update the interpretative and design approaches, in a balance
between the preservation of memory and innovation goals;
4. urban and agricultural green spaces, to be focused both in the phase of cognitive "survey" and in that of
the project proposal, interpreting vegetation as a constitutive element of the project in its botanical, physical,
formal, spatial and functional connotations with respect to the liveability of urban or peri-urban systems.

SPECIFIC RESEARCH TOPICS
Within this investigation area, some specific research topics will be specified, which remain consistent with
the PNRR themes and which match:
1.A. to main contemporary changes concerning a wide range of spaces linked to the domestic sphere,
shared and spared, also in reference to the pandemic experience [PA];
2.A. to the sustainability of the design interventions, to urban and rural liveability, to the rethinking of "internal
areas", as an opportunity for specific tests about new ways of housing in transitional spaces, mostly
abandoned [PA];
2.B. to the role of infrastructure in the environmental, spatial and functional recovery of urban and / or
landscape systems, including information and energy infrastructures [PA] [PC];
3.A to the design project aiming to recovery the architectural artefacts and vegetation, focusing on the
identification and recognition of the cultural values they embed , to preserve and pilot toward the future [PA]
[PC];
3.B. to the role of art in the recovery of the meaning of places and in their enhancement, also for tourism /
cultural purposes [PA] [PC];
4.A. to the design modification of certain urban and peri-urban spaces, from mineral surface to
planted surface (“from the road to the tree-lined avenue”, “from the neighborhood to the park”) [PA] .

In relation to that aforementioned topics, some further specific research subjects will be identified, to be
intended as case studies of particular interest:
- the enhancement and reinterpretation of the rural aspect of large archaeological areas;
- the ancient rural villages or small towns, far from large urban settlements, to be framed in a new and
sustainable meaning of landscape which is changing and where to face dwelling in balance between
tradition and modernity.
- the system of newly founded rural settlements, built starting from the 1940s, intended as a productive and
environmental development model that can be re-updated in eco-systemic terms;
- the complex disciplinary condition, which remains largely unquestioned, related to the need to transform
the territories marked by illegal construction, where housing is prevalent, and which are often branded by
territorial fragility.
- the design rethinking strategies concerning the huge assets of "unfinished" buildings, transforming their
meaning from waste into a resource.
- the possible architectural definition of existing and / or planned "sustainable energy landscapes"
(photovoltaic systems and wind turbines).

As put in evidence by research themes yet evocated, The scientific aspects, as the training and study
activities, as evidenced by the research themes described, will concern the entire thematic and scalar field
of the Scientific Disciplinary Sectors (SS.SS.DD) which in Italy are named ICAR / 14 and ICAR / 15,- which
concern the project of the landscape, the city and the building.
The inquiry about which architecture to design for the ecological transition will question the meanings of
the formal structures and of the devices that compose them; will focuses on the relationships between
landscape, place and building, and on the internal space as an aesthetic domain which is intrinsically
linked to the landscape and urban structure, as to the everyday crucial practices of the communities.
Furthermore, the research field includes interior architecture, exhibition design and museography, which
are specific disciplinary areas of the Scientific Disciplinary sector named ICAR / 16, as to deepen the
relationships between the city and the landscape as marked by the complexity of their material and
immaterial references.