The seminar focuses the issue of rural areas and their environmental relevance in the light of the rapid transformations that have occurred with the Pandemic. The rural dimension in Italy constitutes an area of reflection which implies history and design.
Through lectures and a designing exercise on a study case, the seminar will contribute to broadening the methods and knowledge on the concept of rurality.
Nov 2022 - Sep 2023
The PhD will deal with linking different study experiences on rurality: from a point of view of conception and denomination by building a real genealogy of the rural in modernity. The term derives from the Latin rus-ruris which means countryside, it is often used in contrast with the city, with what is urban. It is interesting that the etymology of rus country, derived from ruma, rums is the same as the denomination of the city of Rome, but also of space raum in German room in English. Rural, therefore, as other than the city, as space, extension and we can add, in other interpretations, connected to the action of cultivating.
The theme that places rural areas at the center of the research arises from the need, which emerged after the pandemic, to face the transformations taking place in the territory "outside" the cities. In fact, we are witnessing a renewed attention for areas outside and alternative to the city. It should be noted that in Italy but also in other European countries the structural condition of the settlements in the area is such as to make the theme in some ways inherent in our environmental, historical and cultural context.
PhD students will attend lectures and presentations by scholars from all over the world who have expressed interesting reflections on the topic. In parallel they will apply to a design case study.