Phd in LANDSCAPE AND ENVIRONMENT

Thesis title: Terracqueo Il paesaggio agrario anfibio nell’emergenza idrica

The present research, Terracqueous. The Agricultural Landscape under Conditions of Water Crisis, investigates the lowland agricultural landscape under conditions of environmental constraint, focusing on the role of water as a morphogenetic agent capable of shaping, transforming, and rewriting physical space. Reconsidering the conceptual, semantic, and physical separations between land and water today compels a paradigmatic shift. The study takes as its premise the notions of the amphibious landscape and amphibious cultures—concepts that, in the contemporary context, may be reinterpreted through new interpretative frameworks of co-evolution rather than confrontation between the two elements of nature. The research thus interrogates the amphibious potential of the agricultural landscape, understood across diverse territorial contexts as a resource rather than as a merely productive mechanism.Situated within the doctoral framework New Interdisciplinary Models for Climate Adaptation Landscapes, the project materialises through fieldwork conducted in Colombia (2025) and in the Maremma Grossetana plain in Italy (2023–2025). The inquiry regards lowland agrarian territories as dynamic and hybrid systems, capable of absorbing continuous oscillations between terrestrial and aquatic states. Within this perspective, water is interpreted as a design medium: an adaptive and transitory layer capable of interacting with the historic agricultural grids of reclamation, which—in its presence—may relinquish their structural rigidity in favour of a territorial elasticity that informs recent theoretical and projectual discourses on landscape. The study further explores the tension between ordinary temporalities, structured by cycles of cultivation, and extraordinary temporalities, imposed by climatic emergencies. It proposes a reading of the landscape through the rhythms, durations, and syncopations of a double temporality able to accommodate both the pauses of drought and the intensities of flooding.The methodological framework unfolds through four interpretative phases—emergence, competence, verification, and narration—aimed at reframing extreme climatic events as opportunities for design innovation. Ultimately, the research advances the necessity of transcending the ontological rigidity of the agricultural landscape and of dissolving the dichotomy between land and water, by reinterpreting the terracqueous territory as a performative, flexible, and “weak” system, responsive to the challenges posed by water scarcity and climate change. It concludes by proposing new theoretical, conceptual, and operative instruments for the design of the contemporary agricultural landscape, aimed at fostering the coexistence of natural processes, productive practices, and collective memory.