Paola Viganò

The extreme city: climate change and the transformation of the waterscape

The metropolitan area of the Grand Central Canal of Venice and the complex questions of water in the design of the contemporary environment lie at the centre of this teaching initiative. The workshop was therefore an opportunity not only to convey a methodological approach to the subject of planning to the participants, but also to reflect on how profitable opportunities for new urban and regional planning can be discovered to structure environments differently through exploring planning with water as the key element.

The Horizontal Metropolis: A Radical Project

The book is an account of the international encounter held at the EPFL between researchers and Ph.D. students belonging to different geographic and disciplinary contexts and constructed around two joint occasions: the Latsis Symposium and the 8th Ph.D. Urbanism&Urbanization Seminar 2015. The general theme we have proposed, The Horizontal Metropolis: a radical project, is both an image and a conceptual device through which to criticize, apprehend and imagine the contemporary city and its future challenges. It refers to a specific spatial condition characterized by a horizontality of infrastructure, urbanity, relationships, and by closely interlinked, co-penetrating rural/urban realms, communication, transport and economic systems.