DESIGNING RESILIENCE. Trans-scalar architecture for marginal habitats of Marche Region

authored by

Maria Giada Di Baldassarre

supervised by

Maddalena Ferretti, Jörg Schröder

Abstract

The severe impacts of Covid-19 pandemic and the even more challenging environmental, economic, and social conditions of human settlements today, made evident the urgent need to envision new ways of promoting the resilience of habitats. Habitat here is understood not only in its ecological sense but also as a space of living and a framework in which the actions of society are expressed. In the search for alternative models of development for inhabited spaces, ‘marginal habitats’ are introduced in this research as a broader and more complex interpretation of the phenomenon of ‘inner peripheries’ , including a trans-scalar and multi-systemic perspective. This concept expands the spatial meaning of peripherality to a condition of socio-economic marginality. It also highlights how the static understanding of the periphery is now replaced by the dynamic concept of peripheralization, an effect of fluctuating and instable trends that are inevitably leading to structural deficits, from inaccessibility, to lack of general services, to economic stagnation and long-term abandonment, and finally to shrinkage processes. A new perspective on ‘marginal habitats’ is proposed, starting from the acknowledgement that their spatial peripherality has preserved fundamental qualities that can be considered
as valuable reserves of resilience for their development.

External Organisation(s)

Università Politecnica delle Marche

Type

Doctoral thesis

No. of pages

414

Publication date

17.10.2024

Publication status

Published

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Architecture, Urban Studies, Development

Research Area (based on ÖFOS 2012)

Urban design, Urban planning, Architectural design

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities