Seminar
Drawing on the research accounts of three DIST PhD students, the seminar will explore water-sensitive design at
various scales. From the Water Sensitive City to the individual resident’s psychological perception of risk,
via infrastructure failures at neighbourhood level. Drawing on experiences from Europe and Latin
America, the seminar will discuss the spread of water-sensitive practices, resilience in river areas and the
design of spaces for rainwater in areas prone to flooding.

Book launch
The book Drought: Thresholds and Escape Routes in the Fight Against Climate Change in China by Andrea E. Pia explores the
growing water supply crisis through an ethnographic study of a rural
minority community in China threatened by climate change.

The post Designing with Water appeared first on FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab.

First episode – the ecological transition

Even before being a technical or political issue, ecological transition is a cultural transition. It is a change that prompts us to question the way we inhabit the world and live in cities.

• Lyrics and lead vocals by Manuela Ronci.
• With contributions and voices from young participants in the course Challenges for the Contemporary City.

Zeta _ Cities in Transition is a podcast by FULL – Future Urban Legacy Lab, the research center on cities and territory at the Polytechnic University of Turin, produced for the ZetaLab project, promoted by the City of Turin and funded by the Piedmont Region to promote participation and active citizenship among young people.

• Coordination Mauro Fontana, Erica Mangione, Manuela Ronci.
• With the participation of PoliTo per il Sociale and Lucio Beltrami.
• Post-production and editing Claudio Jampaglia at Radio Popolare studios.
• Music by Gaetano Nicosia.
• Graphics by Giuseppe Mangiola.

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Through a teaching program about air quality, developed with high school teachers and the National Association of Science Teachers, students learn about sensor technology, environmental science and the health impacts of pollutants. Students collaborate in collecting data on particulate matter, temperature and monitoring their perceptions, validating air dispersion models and exploring how environmental conditions affect their well-being. By not just observing, but inviting those involved to assemble, measure, analyse and represent, the SCoolAir programme builds a replicable educational model that strengthens the links between schools and universities.

SCoolAir is a project conducted within the framework of the European call HE Impetus.

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A second training module entitled ‘Protecting the Future’, organised by PoliTO per il Sociale, will illustrate theories and practices on the themes of participation and co-design.

The addressees of the initiative are young administrators, under 35 or newly appointed, and young people under 29, in order to approach active citizenship paths by reducing the gap between politics and institutions, addressing topics that aim to increase passion for the common good, public commitment, value ethics and aimed at deepening topical issues.

At the end of the cycle, FULL issues a report to summarise the themes and methods of the initiative, a charter of intentions with the motions expressed by the course participants to be submitted to the administration, and the four-episode podcast ‘Zeta’.

Course program

March 21, 2025 – Visions for a fairer future

• At OGR
• Loris Servillo, Mauro Fontana, Erica Mangione, Manuela Ronci – Polytechnic University of Turin/FULL
Presentation of the course program and objectives.
Lecture on the challenges of planning and managing contemporary cities and the importance of thinking about the city of the future in the context of the “just city,” in line with SDG 11 of the UN Agenda: “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.”

March 28, 2025 – Regeneration of urban spaces & community spaces

• Presso Scuola primaria “G. Parini” – Corso Giulio Cesare 26
• Cristiana Rossignolo – Politecnico di Torino, Monica Postiglione e Anna Pratt – esperte della materia
Spazi di comunità come hub ibridi sociali-culturali.
• At the “G. Parini” Primary School – Corso Giulio Cesare 26
• Cristiana Rossignolo – Turin Polytechnic, Monica Postiglione and Anna Pratt – experts in the field
Community spaces as hybrid social-cultural hubs.
The presentation will explore the role of urban regeneration of common goods in Italy, analyzing approaches, policies, and tools available to cities and citizens. We will start from the experience of community spaces as cultural hubs, highlighting their impact on urban dynamics and social and institutional innovations. Within this framework, we will present the results of the SPAZI DI COMUNITÀ (COMMUNITY SPACES) research project, carried out in 2024 by NUVAP (Nucleo di Valutazione e Analisi per la Programmazione, Evaluation and Analysis Unit for Planning) at the Department for Territorial Cohesion of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, as part of the SI.VALUTA project. The research analyzed these practices at the national level, with a focus on significant experiences in the Turin area.

April 11, 2025 – Space justice and social justice in the transition towards fairer roads.

• At the Mollino Room of the Valentino Castle
• Gabriele D’Adda and Elisa Vitale – Polytechnic University of Turin/FULL
Reflections, starting from the “Just Streets” project, on spatial justice and social justice in the context of the transition to active and sustainable mobility and the creation of fairer streets. In order to make the transition from car-dominated streets to public spaces characterized by active mobility and a variety of uses, it is essential not only to take into account but also to prioritize the needs and visions of social groups that are often underrepresented in urban planning. A “critical walk” is planned in the pedestrianized area of San Salvario.

May 9, 2025 – Green/blue infrastructure and the environmental transition

• At OGR
• Manuela Ronci and Tymon Wolender – Polytechnic University of Turin/FULL
Strategic planning in river environments
The first part of the meeting will take the form of a lecture and will consist of a theoretical introduction, an overview of the evolution of the main planning approaches, and an in-depth analysis of international case studies, characterized by different focuses and scales of intervention.
The second part of the afternoon will be dedicated to workshop activities. Starting from a reflection on key issues in the transformation of urban river areas, related to the content of the lecture and applicable to the context of Turin, the workshop will aim to identify areas with regenerative potential and to develop macro-objectives/strategies/actions that could potentially be applied in the river areas of the city of Turin.

May 23, 2025 – Digital infrastructure

• At OGR and the nearby Energy Center
• Maria Ferrara – Polytechnic University of Turin/FULL/EST@EnergyCenter team
Digital Twin and climate city contract
The meeting aims to outline the potential offered by digital twins on an urban scale to support the design, implementation, and monitoring of sustainability policies for cities. In this regard, the European context will be analyzed, and in particular the response of pilot cities to the EU Mission “Climate Neutral and Smart Cities,” including the City of Turin. The meeting will conclude at the Decision Theater of the Energy Center of the Polytechnic University of Turin, with a demonstration of the current capabilities of the digital platform under development to support the drafting and monitoring of the Climate City Contract of the City of Turin, outlining its potential for further development and replicability in other urban contexts.

June 6, 2025 – Intangible culture – data and citizen science

• At Officine Creative (Cecchi Point)
• Sofia Fellini and Tommaso Listo, Polytechnic University of Turin/FULL
Data and citizen science
The meeting will be structured as follows: 1) a theoretical lesson on citizen science as a practice of knowledge construction and exchange between the public and institutions; 2) a visit to La Biblioteca dell’Aria, a citizen science project based at Officine Creative; 3) a workshop activity, in which participants will be asked to work in small groups and propose a possible citizen science project on issues relevant to their local areas, to be discussed collectively.

June 13, 2025 – Young people and public engagement

• At OGR
• Loris Servillo, Mauro Fontana, Erica Mangione, Manuela Ronci – Politecnico di Torino/FULL
Final lesson in which participants are guided through a review of the course content, with the aim of presenting their images of the city of the future through two in-person activities:
• Drafting a letter of intent to be presented to the City of Turin
• The creation of an informative podcast together with a radio communication expert

PROTECTING THE FUTURE – curated by PoliTO for Social Issues

June 19, 2025 – Theories and practices on participation and co-design
• At Castello del Valentino or online

June 26, 2025 – Practical workshop on participation and co-design
• At Valentino Castle

The post Challenges for the contemporary city appeared first on FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab.

Starting from the development of an analytical framework for Turin’s river system, the project Turin and its rivers aims to identify transformation scenarios for the city’s river contexts. These scenarios are intended as a tool capable of revealing planning opportunities, translating them into an overview capable of guiding coherent and coordinated development actions.

The research has three macro-goals:

(1) To bring attention back to the city’s natural heritage, also understood as a powerful device to respond to the effects of climate change;

(2) To structure and promote a new narrative for the city, through the systemic description and valorisation of the components that characterise each river;

(3) To provide an interpretative framework useful for the renewal of planning and development practices in the City of Turin.

The research deals with a complex topic, addressing the relationship between built areas and river context, the ecosystem dimension and the definition of transformative scenarios.

The research assumes that Turin’s four rivers, understood as ecological corridors connecting the city to the metropolitan area, can play a crucial role in combating climate change and improving the quality of urban life. The study investigates the potential of the ‘Blue Comb’ with the aim of defining a strategy to strengthen its ecological, social and economic role. Through three interpretative lenses — ecological city, inherited city and city of leisure — the research identifies a sequence of actions to reactivate the untapped potential of the river corridors and renew the relationship between the urban core and the metropolitan area.

The proposed framework of interventions enhances and renews existing areas that have so far played a marginal role in urban policies, assigning each one a function consistent with its characteristics and capable of generating positive effects on the entire city. The research ultimately translates into nine strategic projections, which redefine the narrative of Turin’s four rivers and identify new urban centres, reaffirming the link between natural resources, the built landscape and the development of the city in its relationship with the surrounding area.

Throughout Turin’s urban history, rivers have played multiple and changing roles: a strategic resource for productive and industrial development, a structuring element of the urban form, but also an urban margin progressively marginalised by infrastructure, urbanisation processes and economic transformations. The research therefore proposes to reinterpret these river basins as an integrated system — defined as the ‘Blue Comb’ — which could become one of the main interpretative and design keys for contemporary Turin. The aim is to identify strategies and actions capable of renewing their ecological, social and economic role, enhancing their potential as environmental corridors and spaces for interaction between the city and the surrounding area.

The analysis is developed through the three interpretative perspectives mentioned above — ecological city, inherited city and leisure city — which allow the river system to be observed from different and complementary points of view. The lens of the ecological city highlights the role of rivers as natural infrastructures capable of strengthening urban environmental resilience, improving biodiversity and contributing to climate adaptation processes. The perspective of the inherited city, on the other hand, analyses the relationship between rivers, built heritage and historical processes of urban transformation, highlighting how the river landscape is the result of a stratification of urban practices, infrastructures and morphologies. Finally, the lens of the city of leisure explores the potential of rivers as spaces for public enjoyment, leisure and socialising, highlighting the role that these places can play in the construction of new forms of urban habitability.

Starting from these three perspectives, the research identifies a series of strategic areas along watercourses and proposes a sequence of actions aimed at reactivating the currently untapped potential of the river system. The overall programme of interventions focuses in particular on existing urban contexts which, despite possessing significant environmental, landscape or social characteristics, have so far played a marginal role in urban policies and public investment. The proposed meta-project suggests that each of these areas could take on a specific function consistent with its territorial character and, at the same time, generate positive effects on the entire urban system.

The research ultimately leads to the definition of nine strategic projections, understood as possible trajectories for the transformation of Turin’s river system. These projections derive from a comprehensive rethinking of the urban narrative linked to waterways and the discovery of new potential focal points along their course. The meta-project thus focuses on some of the structural characteristics of the city crossed by rivers, recognising the value of the relationship between natural and ecological resources and the built landscape, which has been established over time through historical processes and urban transformations. From this perspective, the research proposes to reaffirm the historical link between Turin and the surrounding area, reinterpreting in a contemporary light the idea — already present in the Baroque vision of the city — of an urban system in which the form of the city and the natural landscape are deeply interconnected.

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Taneha K. Bacchin is an architect, urban designer, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of urban design, landscape architecture, environmental sciences, and humanities. She is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Research of Urban Design at Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft. In her projects and teaching, she investigates the nexus between space, ecology, culture, and politics in the design and planning of critical and highly dynamic landscapes. Her current work focuses on situated (site/context/culture-sensitive) forms of urban design related to environmental fragility, increasing extreme weather events and climate, and resource depletion, with projects in the North Sea, the Arctic, Brazil, South Africa, and India. She is co-leader of the Research Group Delta Urbanism, head of Transitional Territories Graduation Studio and chief-editor of the Journal of Delta Urbanism. Her work has been funded and published internationally and exhibited at the São Paulo Architecture Biennale 2013, the Venice Architecture Biennale 2002 and 2018 (Dutch, Brazilian and Venetian Pavilions), and the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam IABR 2022.

She is Principal Investigator and Lead Coordinator of the NWO-DST ‘Water4Change’ (W4C) Research Programme, Cooperation India-The Netherlands (2019-2025): a transdisciplinary programme by eleven knowledge institutions focusing on water sensitive and cultural situated design for secondary cities in India. W4C is a flagship programme of the govermental Cooperation India-The Netherlands and part of ‘Water for Impact’ – projects under ‘actionable science’ by TU Delft Global Initiative.

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The course aims to prepare students for local and global challenges by reflecting on the actions needed to make the cities of the future more equitable and sustainable through technological and social innovation. The economic wellbeing and quality of life of more than half of the world’s population depend on urban and metropolitan areas, the ability to balance growth and innovation in urban areas with social needs and the mitigation of environmental risks and social inequalities, and the concern to protect and promote tangible and intangible cultural heritage for future development.

In this context, the teaching proposes an interdisciplinary approach to the most pressing urban issues, such as: mobility, energy consumption, the water cycle, digital infrastructure, the fight against economic and social inequalities, the regeneration of economic and social inequalities, the regeneration of urban spaces through the ability to reuse the material and immaterial heritage embedded in urban forms and landscapes. Methods, technologies and best practices in the development of applications for smart mobility through the internet of things, climate control and zero energy districts in the urban environment, energy communities, ecosystem services for resilient and sustainable cities through an eco-hydrological approach, new tools for representing the city and city data, methods for assessing the socio-economic impact of policies on the future of urban populations are explored. Each topic is addressed by combining a theoretical framework with laboratory and application activities related to the Turin context.

The lectures include the participation of lecturers affiliated with the FULL centre and external guests, and will explore in detail the research conducted both within the Interdepartmental Centre of the Politecnico di Torino and internationally, success stories, and the analysis of some experiments in pilot cities. The disciplinary areas involved are urban studies, planning and architecture, energy, environmental, network and electronic engineering, and geomatics. The first edition of the course ran from November 2022 to June 2023. The inaugural lecture was delivered by Chiara Foglietta, Councillor of the City of Turin for Ecological and Digital Transition, Innovation, Mobility and Transport.

The third edition is underway for 2024/25.

2022/23 Course program

INTRODUCTION

– 04/11/2022 Presentation of “100 Climate-neutral Cities by 2030,” the case of Turin (with Councilor Chiara Foglietta) + presentation of the course and exercise (Loris Servillo, Caterina Quaglio)

MODULE I/a – Physical and social infrastructure

– 11/11/2022 NZEB, Nearly zero-energy buildings (Maria Ferrara)

– 11/18/2022 Integration of renewable sources and energy communities + visit to the PVZEN laboratory – PhotoVoltaic Zero Energy Network (Enrico Fabrizio)

– 11/25/2022 How food market logistics are changing our cities (Agostino
Strina)

– 12/02/2022 The Valentino Park project (Elena Vigliocco)

– 12/16/2022 Wrap-up 1 (Loris Servillo, Caterina Quaglio)

MODULE II – Ecology and circular economy

13/01/2023 – Designing Circularity – Introduction to the Circular Economy (Elena Piera Montacchini and Silvia Tedesco)

03/03/2023 – Reuse of Rainwater (Roberto Revelli)

10/03/2023 – Water Remediation (Tiziana Tosco)

24/03/2023 – Visit to Ortialti (Elena Carmagnati)

31/03/2023 – Wrap-up 2 (Loris Servillo, Caterina Quaglio)

MODULE III – Smart and Digital

MODULE II/b – Ecology and Circular Economy

MODULE III – Smart and Digital

28/04/2023 – Mobility and Vehicle Traffic Simulation Systems (Marco Rapelli)

05/05/2023 – Visit to 5T (2:00–6:00 PM, two groups)

MODULE I/b – Physical and Social Infrastructure

-19/05/2023 – Regenerating the Existing City, Bike Tour of Case Studies in Turin (Daniele Campobenedetto)

– 26/05/2023 Wrap-up 3 (Loris Servillo, Caterina Quaglio)

(TBD) FINAL EVENT: Presentation of the work and open discussion

cover photo credit: Lucio Beltrami

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The project combines the complex ES theme of urban adaptation to climate change, through i-Tree, a software suite born to evaluate the benefits provided by vegetation. Particularly, through i-Tree Hydro, the quantity and quality of runoff rainwater are analyzed considering the comparison between different scenarios: we analyze a present case (2019) and future cases (2071–2100), with reference to climate projections for Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 scenario (considering climate change mitigation actions) and RCP 8.5 scenario (no actions) of the COSMO-CLM regional climate model, produced by the Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change (CMCC). The discussion focuses on comparing the results obtained in the different scenarios, deepening the role of a medium-sized urban green infrastructure on the surrounding environment as the climate and vegetative conditions vary.

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The reduction of energy consumptions in buildings is a fundamental point in the EU policies to achieve energy and climate targets. The aim of this research is to design Urban-Scale Energy Models –using GIS tools– able to explore energy consumption, production and productivity and to evaluate how energy consumption changes according to the urban environment and climate conditions. The goal is to create a platform, such as an urban-energy atlas, to help urban planners and policy makers to plan sustainable cities and smart energy systems. These energy models and tools at territorial scale may be used to:

explore energy consumption, emissions and thermal comfort conditions;

quantitatively assess renovation strategies and their impacts on the territory;

promote smart green solutions with the use of financial mechanisms and incentives;

identify effective energy policies, considering the real characteristics of the buildings, population and urban morphology (e.g. for building codes).

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