Lecturers: activities will be coordinated by Professors Stefano Della Torre, Arian Heidari Afshari, Mehrnaz Rajabi.
Period: June - July 2025
Location: Milano – Leonardo Campus
Places available: 20 students from Politecnico di Milano's School of Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering and 20 international students.
Closing date for registration: March 16, 2025 - only for students of the Mantova Campus of Politecnico di Milano.
Description: The main question of this workshop is how we, architects, planners, and conservation experts, can offer deeper understandings and more inclusive memories of a cultural heritage site for a variety of spectacles and layers of affection toward it. To pass beyond the Outstanding Universal Values of cultural heritage toward its proper understanding of the sense of place, one should be able to effectively investigate the same built-up environment from different points of view and be open to contradictory interpretations. To imagine a more comprehensive cultural landscape of a heritage site for contemporary society, different layers of history, past events, and people’s involvement in the re/use and re/appreciation of the site should be observed and understood sympathetically. Various disciplinary approaches can be tracked to the current existence of a cultural heritage site, but also every type of spectacles can see it differently and remember it in their own ways.
Today diverse mass-appealing mediums involve our understanding of a site, but also its material culture, shared values (heritage and societal), and its oral history/narratives can be recognized differently if one acts as an international tourist or local user or historian, or ethnographer. History is inevitably tied to the pushes and pulls of the present day. Historical narratives are re/produced, re/generated, re/edited, and actively translated depending on the social and political forces at any given time and place. They naturally tend to become shorter, more abstract, and symbolic or presented as such by both conventional and new mediums. Yet, the attempt to move beyond the authorships for the heritage site toward the memories associated with it is fundamental in not falling into the trap of oversimplification of the sense of place, where shared memories are shaped and continue to thrive. This workshop is an attempt to explore what the sense of place is and could be in a given case study of a cultural heritage site and investigate the methods and tools with which we can observe, understand, and express/represent it coherently and effectively for the public audience in a frame of different cultures. In this way, the workshop will provide an opportunity to compare how architectural history features also in public life and discourses in different local micro-cultures as well as internationally diverse ones. In particular, this workshop explores and learns from Northern Italian context as sources of cultural richness in understanding cultural heritage while investigating a case study site located in the Lombardy Region.
During site visits and public lectures by course and guest professors, students will be exposed to different approaches to identifying the sense of place and diverse layers of historical reading of the case study site. Accordingly, various tools and methodologies for analyzing and presenting will be explored. Participants will then explore the selected case study, focusing on information about, but not only limited to, society, material culture, and its past representations employing different media such as newspapers, magazines, and period films. Finally, they attempt to represent their research in a graphical portfolio using their choice of effective media to communicate the authentic sense of place of the case study.
Educational credits: Are recognized 4 CFU.
Workshop registration: you must send your expression of interest with CV and Portfolio via e-mail to the following address: rethinkinghistoryworkshop@gmail.com.
Note: for more information arian.heidari@polimi.it .
Lecturers: activities will be coordinated by Professors Luca Cardani, Angelo Lorenzi and Matteo Moscatelli. Professors Andreu Arriola and Carmen Fiol from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona will also be present.
Period: June - July 2025
Location: Mantova Campus of the Politecnico di Milano and Spazio Natta in Como.
Places available: 6 students from Politecnico di Milano and 6 students from Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona.
Closing date for registration: May 5th, 2025.
Description: The workshop project will consist of the creation of a series of temporary structures for the redevelopment of some open spaces along the waterfront of the city of Como. The intervention within this system, which features some of the most important buildings of Larian Rationalism - the Novocomum and Casa Giuliani Frigerio on the one hand, the Monumento ai Caduti, the Headquarters of the Canottieri Lario and the Yacht Club on the other -, will have to aim not only at improving accessibility and attractiveness and developing urbanity and outdoor comfort, but also at enhancing a highly relevant historical heritage of the architectural culture of the 20th century.
Educational credits: 4 CFU are recognized
Note: Participation in the Summer School will be free of charge. Space and supplies will be provided by the organization. Room and board will be paid for by the students (expected euro 60-70 per day). In order to allow the widest participation, intensive activities will be scheduled so as not to interfere with semester teaching activities. The tentative workshop schedule could include:
- June 25, July 2-9-16: introductory presentations and historical research work (didactics planned only in the afternoon, in presence in Mantua and possibly at a distance);
- July 21-25: intensive in-presence teaching in Como.
Workshop registration: you must send your expression of interest via e-mail to: matteo.moscatelli@polimi.it . If requests exceed the available places, a selection will be organized by Monday, May 19, through portfolio and online interview.
Attached are the panels of previous editions: 2019 and 2022.
Lecturers: Activities will be coordinated by Professors Barbara Bogoni and Vittorio Uccelli
Period: June 29 to July 5, 2025
Location: Casarola di Monchio delle Corti (Parma)
Places available: 30
Closing date for registration: While places are available or May 30, 2025
Description: During the week of June 29 to July 05, 2025, the ninth edition of the Architecture workshop entitled La Casa del Poeta (The Poet's House) will kick off and will be held in Casarola di Monchio delle Corti (PR). Perched on the ridge of the Parma Apennines and immersed in the Parco dei Cento Laghi and the Attilio, Bernardo and Giuseppe Bertolucci Literary Park recently established and the only Literary Park present in Emilia Romagna, the village of Casarola is known to be the home of poet Attilio Bertolucci and his sons Bernardo and Giuseppe Bertolucci. In the upper part of the village is the poet's 17th-century house where the whole family and particularly Attilio spent long periods of inspiration until the last years of his life.
The Architectural Composition Workshop The Poet's House offers participating students an intense design experience in a context that is quite relevant in terms of culture, landscape-environment and existing architectural heritage. The workshop, which will take the form of a design atelier, will allow students to meet internationally renowned architects and work closely with a series of visiting-critics who will alternate throughout the workshop, assisted by architects acting as tutors.
Educational credits: 4 CFU for architecture students and 3 CFU for engineering students (internship) are recognized.
For more information and to register for the workshop, visit the website: www.parcoappennino.it/casadelpoeta
Lecturers: Activities will be coordinated by Professors Elisa Boeri, Luca Cardani, Carlo Peraboni e Claudia Tinazzi
Period: March – June 2025
Location: Mantova Campus, Politecnico di Milano
Places available: 30
Closing date for registration: 30 – 2nd and 3rd year bachelor's degree students
Description: The workshop, aimed at students of the Bachelor's Degree (2nd and 3rd years), explores the themes of the Master's Degree in Architectural Design and History active at the Mantova Campus of the Politecnico di Milano. The activities hinge on MANTOVARCHITETTURA 2025, a cultural project that for more than ten years has included exhibitions, conferences and meetings with the protagonists of international architectural culture on the theme of the dialogue between urban context and project, who will be involved in the work phases. The workshop is among the activities incardinated in the UNESCO Chair in Architectural Planning and Protection in Heritage Cities established at the Mantova Campus of Politecnico di Milano.
The theme of MANTOVARCHITECTURE 2025 Architecture and conflicts will be interpreted by the workshop on the track of Mantuan history and contemporaneity. The analogical potential of medieval war machines is the basis of the investigation of the design workshop that questions the possibilities of operating a critique through re-construction, in order to transform the warlike character into a liberating, festive and surprising one.
Educational credits: 4 CFU for architecture students
For more information please see the attached Workshop presentation
To register for the workshop, you must fill out the following FORM