Education

In a world increasingly affected by significant challenges, it is becoming more important to provide effective solutions to face the effects of environmental, climatic and socio-economic changes. This situation raises needs to get the advantage of all new capacities in dealing with such profound changes. Urban resilience approach is currently used to re-think cities in the face of multiple challenges, increasing their strategic ability to adapt in the short, medium and long term in the wake of United Nations’ major international policies towards the global sustainability governance promoted by the Sustainable Development Goals, the New Urban Agenda and the Paris Agreement. 

The one-year 2^nd level Specializing Master course aims at satisfying the rising request for new technical and managerial figures, providing students with the necessary tools to successfully respond to the changing needs of the work market. The courses are designed with the maximum flexibility possible, integrating the academic experience with a practical approach to subjects thanks to several partnership with national and international companies. The course is aimed at both Italian and foreign students, giving the participants a global vision based on technological innovation and close contact with the research world at the Polytechnic of Turin.

The one-year 2^nd level Specializing Master's Programme in Methods and techniques for governing resilient cities answer the need of a new technical expertise, embodied by the educational path of methods and techniques developed by the Interdepartmental Responsible Risk Resilience Centre (R3C) of the Politecnico di Torino, for the analysis of the vulnerability of territories and for the evaluation of the urban system's capacity to respond to natural and human risks in a resilience and sustainability perspective.

The course represents a unique opportunity for young graduates and professionals with a scientific and/or technical background to:

• acquire a full understanding of the dynamics underpinning the ongoing global changes in cities;
• learn multidisciplinary approaches to global changes on how to conceive and implement Urban Resilience Thinking, through planning and management practices;
• create a further space of in-depth knowledge of the skills and responsibilities to face a renewed role of the profession that requires regulating the anthropic transformations on the environment in a resilient perspective.

The master will not only train a new professional figure, expert in planning and project management of resilient territories facing the challenges caused by environmental, ecological, economic and social changes. It will offer a direct link with local institutions such as Piedmont Region, Metropolitan City of Turin, Province of Vercelli, Municipality of Turin, Municipality of Moncalieri, interested in hosting students for their internships and co-financing the training course.

More info - Open Call for the 3rd edition

Cities, global changes and sustainability is an Erasmus+ mobility project between University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg and Politecnico di Torino. The aim of this project is to start building a network in the region, in line with the Italian national strategy and with the POLITO Strategic Plan 2018 – 2024, according to which POLITO “will reinforce its commitment to international cooperation paying particular attention to Asia and Africa”, will “include the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN 2030 Agenda in our curricula”, with a “special focus on integration paths intended for students coming from emergent countries which are the main target of the SDGs”, like South Africa, and will also “orient interdisciplinary research towards the achievement of the SDGs”. Indeed the partners of this proposal were chosen because of common research fields specifically targeting SDGs 7, 11 and 13.

REcube, funded by the ERASMUS+ program, line KA220 - European cooperation partnerships for Higher Education, intends to transmit and disseminate at European and international level a new sustainable approach to the conservation and reuse of modern reinforced concrete architecture, enhancing this significant European heritage. Provided for master's degree students of engineering and architecture of partner universities, the REcube training program aims to foster the development of a new mentality in the field of Modern Heritage Regeneration.

Experimental construction is a characteristic feature of concrete constructions well into the interwar period. For a long time, the concrete skeleton (Hennebique system) dominated practice; however, casting as a new production method and the old construction form were considered contradictory. Numerous designers developed new moulds from practical production. The Italian Pier Luigi Nervi with his "Ferro-Cemento" proposed one of the most groundbreaking construction methods: instead of a formwork, the concrete was placed with trowels on a wire mesh of any shape, which was fastened to carrying irons. In this way, the reinforced concrete not only detached itself from the linear skeleton shape, but also from the rigid geometry of its formwork. The cast stone was jointless, its shape completely independent. Nervi used the very slim, specially shaped elements extremely inexpensively as finished elements, as formwork, or - most impressively - as lost formwork. Material, form, construction and architectural expression are inseparably linked here. Some of the most important testimonies to this special search for form originated in the post-war years in Torino or nearby.

The summer school in Torino is co-sponsored by the Keeping It Modern grant of the Getty Foundation, that in 2019 was awarded to an international team lead by the proponents.  Thus, the attendees to the school will be given the chance to understand first-hand the essence of modelled concrete and learn and address the issues related to the structural evaluation and  conservation of the heritage of the twentieth century. We will study the method of Ferrocemento by designing and producing objects in concrete ourselves. In addition, we will visit numerous masterpieces of Italian Modernism in Torino and discuss how this legacy can inspire new paths of design and regeneration.

Within the course, students from different disciplines (civil engineers, building engineers and architects) will have the opportunity to learn and elaborate on issues related to the conservation of the heritage of the twentieth century. Through a multidisciplinary approach, students will be trained to analyze buildings belonging to this legacy, of which Torino is rich in testimonies, through teaching, recreation and entertainment activities. In particular, students will have the opportunity to learn how to read the work of Pier Luigi Nervi and its main elements in ferrocement: in the laboratory of DISEG they will reproduce elements in ferrocement that will undergo mechanical tests and measurements, to better understand not only the manufacturing process but the qualities and mechanical properties that have made it one of the most characteristic elements of one of the most famous Italian designers in the world.

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The summer school aims at providing the participants with the latest knowledge on urban resilience research, practice and policies through lectures; and to co-develop their skills and knowledge on planning for urban resilience using Copenhagen’s real-life experience and challenges as a living laboratory, through a problem-based workshops.

The summer school goal is to bring together multi-disciplinary knowledge and perspectives, from science and practice, on the different global and local  challenges faced by cities, and to provide a process design methodology and the necessary skills to developed informed policies, strategies, plans and solutions for urban resilience, that can be later used in the specific context of work of the participants.

The lectures provides an overview on major international policies in relation to urban resilience (Sustainable Development Goals, Paris Agreement, New Urban Agenda and Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction), key practices worldwide including those developed in the frame of major international organizations (e.g. UNFCCC Secretariat, UNDRR, UNESCO, UN-Habitat City Resilience Profiling Program, ICLEI, WWF), and the latest developments and perspectives for research.

The workshop gives the opportunity to the participants to engage, through group work, with real-life problems and challenges faced by The City of Copenhagen, and to develop a strategy and action plan following a process design methodology, that includes specific methods as system analysis, forecasting, vision and backcasting of future scenarios, monitoring and evaluation.

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The summer school “Nuovi Scenari per patrimoni monastici dismessi” [New scenarios for decommissioned  monastic heritage] held in Lucca (25 July-3 August 2019) was promoted by the Architecture Department of University of Bologna, Cherubino Ghirardacci Centre for Studies, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, and the Agostinian Monastic Community of the Cento Corpus Domini Monastery. The R3C research group actively participated to the summer school through two lessons and round tables.

The first lesson "Knowledge tools and critical debate in the field of religious heritage" (Andrea Longhi) was focused on the actors involved in the management of religious and ecclesiastical heritage, including the role of communities. This heritage is characterized by particular capillarity and density on the Italian territory but it is subject to several pervasive risks. For this reason, is fundamental the interoperability of the databases. The second one " Heritage, risk and prevention: strategies for a large-scale planning" (Giulia De Lucia) concerned the presentation of the RPR projects and the several applications of the formulated method for other kind of heritage, in this case the monasteries, central topic of the summer school.

More material could be find at this link