Tracks
Track 1. Leaving NO DATA behind
“The world’s digital heritage is at risk of being lost to posterity. Contributing factors include the rapid obsolescence of the hardware and software which brings it to life, uncertainties about resources, responsibility and methods for maintenance and preservation, and the lack of supportive legislation. Attitudinal change has fallen behind technological change. Digital evolution has been too rapid and costly for governments and institutions to develop timely and informed preservation strategies” (UNESCO 2009).
The potential loss of the world's digital heritage is a concerning issue, not only due to the rapid obsolescence of hardware and software, but especially considering the uncertain resource allocation and a lack of supportive legislation. As a result, attitudes toward preservation have lagged behind technological advancement, making it difficult for governments and institutions to develop timely preservation strategies. However, the advancement of architectural and urban planning research, holds great promise thanks to cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), especially as it pertains to the analysis of large data sets and the development of predictive models. Nevertheless, this rapid expansion raises issues for data management, such as data transparency, standardized 3D models for scientific applications, and long-term accessibility and preservation.
To address these challenges, there is a need for sustainable implementation of new technologies, considering their potential impact on environmental justice issues within ecosystem services, as well as ethical and social implications. This includes ensuring that nothing is lost in the process, which is what "Leaving NO DATA behind" stands for. This track is opened, but not limited to, all those contributions that delve into cutting-edge technologies in architectural research, sustainable scientific solutions for the publication of 3D models and data preservation, as well as modalities of Human-Machine Interactions (HMI) in the growing implementation of AI-based systems, autonomous agents, and robotics.
Track 2. Leaving NO LANDSCAPE behind
“The landscape remains the only image in the world which is able to restore something of the structural opacity of the real – and thus it is the most human and faithful, although the least scientific, of concepts. For this reason, there can be no crisis (and certainly no death) of the landscape: because the very concept of has been conceived to describe crisis, the vascillation and trembling of the world.” (Farinelli 1991)
The climate and environmental crisis, the exposure of our territories to multiple risks, due to natural hazards, the loss of biodiversity and the lack of ecological resources, require a new and essential perspective of mitigation and adaptation to climate change and risk reduction, as well of protection and enhancement of cultural and natural heritage. In a context of socio-demographic changes and several crises - economic, political, cultural, health - these environmental vulnerabilities are increasingly intertwined with social fragilities, creating forms of inequity and processes of exclusion which are projected in space. It is becoming even clearer that there is a need of re-thinking new territorial visions and re-shaping new territorial assets, not only through the development of planning strategies and policies but also with the safeguarding and enhancement of our heritage, which should combine environmental and social justice.
“Leaving NO LANDSCAPE behind” means to integrate mitigation and adaptation measures with the valorization or cultural heritage and natural resources, according to a new ecologically-oriented perspective, to conserve biodiversity, to promote the regeneration of our urban and rural areas, which are facing environmental and social challenges, to strengthen the spatial relationship between communities and their surroundings, enhancing a sense of belonging to the space.
This track welcomes theorical contributions and research, practices and case-studies, that recognize the territory and its multiple landscapes as a resource of inclusion and a privileged location for configuring innovative, fair spatial models.
Track 3. Leaving NO SPECIES behind
“The recent experience - dramatic, intense, disturbing - of the pandemic, by laying bare the fragility and vulnerability of the human life, has helped to return strongly the attention on the meaning of the network of life and on some crucial issues: the anthropic impacts on ecological functioning of the habitats of the whole planet and the urgency that a relationship of respectful and conscious interde- pendence with others be restored by the dominant species, ours.” (Lambertini 2021)
The transition we seek to a more sustainable and inclusive future should raise the concept of “nature” to a higher level of awareness, rejecting the human/non-human binarism and considering the agency and the interaction of various spheres of actors and actants. While reducing the use of renewable resources, decarbonizing our economies, and using less energy are all pressing issues for the urban environment, the new challenge is determining how the city and its inhabitants should interact in the context of multispecies coexistence.
By adopting methodologies that include the principle of leaving nothing behind, design cultures should attempt to define how existing intersectional and multi-actor approaches should interact and accommodate non-human logic.
The aim of this track is to allow for the inclusion of those who may be overlooked in traditional design practices, as well as to broaden our imaginations as architects, planners, and designers, by discussing humanity’s current role in relation to “otherness”. “Leaving NO SPECIES behind” is an invitation to imagine how to overcome anthropocentric supremacy in design thinking and method through a transdisciplinary approach, with the goal of promoting a co-evolutionary vision capable of imagining welcoming and enabling spaces for people as well as other organisms in the direction of interspecies spatial justice.