Wetness #4 – Collective imagination and facilitation

The last of a series of four visual essays showcasing projects across the Netherlands, Italy, and Taiwan. The projects investigate the ecocultural transformation of landscapes through situated research and art-based methodologies towards imagining and restoring hydrosocial relations and models of interspecies care to face climate change. These works frame wetness both as a condition and as a value, highlighting the necessity of rethinking a system that relies on a rigidly controlled separation of land and water, and of landscapes and their cultural and situated dimension.

How can we adapt our tools to speak to broader publics?

Research often stays within its own field or discipline. However, it is important to democratize by translating it into formats accessible and shareable with different publics. This is particularly true when it comes to urgent topics affecting everyone like climate change, sea level rise, or ecocultural transformations. Workshops and embodied experiences are powerful tools for actively involving the public, creating learning that moves in multiple directions and experiences that generate something new.

Becoming a pioneer plant

“Becoming a pioneer plant” is a workshop co-designed with permaculture expert Andrea Minchio and presented for the first time during the Industria Festival, a organized by the architectural association of Modena and promoting the reactivation of former industrial sites in the region Emilia-Romagna (Italy).

In the workshop, we invited participants to explore a former industrial area in the harbor of Ravenna by taking the point of view of a pioneer plant. Through embodied research, observation, and sensorial mapping, participants surveyed the space starting from its margins. They explored how more-than-human entities re-inhabit abandoned spaces when human presence fades, and how life develops where our systems fail. The workshop was designed as training for local architects, to help them envision design possibilities that go beyond the human experience, and as a tool to understand how designing for different entities can support the development of climate-adaptive spaces.

This work felt especially urgent in light of recent events: in 2023, Romagna suffered three consecutive floods that displaced more than 150,000 people and caused 17 fatalities. The floods were triggered by prolonged extreme precipitation and worsened by decades of policy-driven soil sealing and cementification that favoured uncontrolled urban development. With this workshop, we wanted to invite architects to adopt a different way of perceiving and conceiving spatial dynamics, and to promote a design approach that could help create flood- and drought-responsive spaces through nature-based solutions and social inclusion.

The workshop was also attended by citizens who wanted to actively engage with the possibility of reimagining their city as a more hospitable, hybrid space. The mix of professionals and other citizens made the experience even more relevant, bridging the gap between designers and users.

Archaeologies of a Submerged Futures

The workshop was designed for middle school students aged 10 to 13 and was proposed within ‘Concittadini,’ an educational program by the Emilia-Romagna region (IT) to promote environmental awareness and education on rising sea levels and floods. The workshop addressed climate change through critical fabulation, storytelling, and hands-on image making. Students created 4D paper spaces through a DIY zine-making process, layering images and narratives to reflect on the city’s evolving relationship with the sea and wetlands. Each scanning and printing cycle added depth to the images, new layers of information, timelines, and imaginaries, creating an archaeological record of ideas of how a future Ravenna could look. Will it be under water? Will it be a floating island in the middle of the Adriatic Sea? How will the places the students know and live in change? What will their favorite park look like? Will they move around by boat? Evolve into mermaids? By asking questions ranging from plausible to absurd, I pushed the students to imagine another world, a waterscape, and the way they would inhabit it. The workshop occurred in February 2023, just before devastating floods transformed Ravenna, leaving many residents homeless and highlighting the urgency of climate change discussions. The urban waterscapes envisioned by students became a more tangible and looming reality, emphasizing the urgency to think, imagine, and act toward a future that sometimes is closer than it looks. The workshop was held for 120 students from the school Istituto Comprensivo Darsena, and I hope eventually to curate a small exhibition to show all the worlds they could imagine.

Through these visual essays, words and projects I wanted to share and ground a methodology that is still growing and changing and finding its place within the broader field of research. There are some amazing practitioners out there doing revolutionary work and trying to bridge different disciplines and approaches driven by curiosity and by the will to build a more just future within the instability we are all living through. It’s small steps, but one after the other, eventually these steps will bring us somewhere.

Thank you for getting to the end of this series of visual essays. I’m always happy to meet new people from any kind of field! Are you interested in knowing more, grabbing a coffee to discuss ideas and reflections or perhaps developing a project together? Don’t hesitate to send an email to matildestolfa@gmail.com

 

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