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News and events promoted by CRAFT and our partners

RESEARCH, TRAINING AND COMPETENCES FOR ANTI-FRAGILE TERRITORIES / A PERMANENT OBSERVATORY / AN ACCELERATOR FOR INNOVATION AND SUPPORT TO PUBLIC ACTION

RESEARCH, TRAINING AND COMPETENCES FOR ANTI-FRAGILE TERRITORIES / A PERMANENT OBSERVATORY / AN ACCELERATOR FOR INNOVATION AND SUPPORT TO PUBLIC ACTION

Work streams

Our generative spaces of ideas, projects and collaboration

The Competence Centre works on the development of methodologies and design approaches that help public administrations to make the most of uncertainty, complexity, fragmentation and to build enabling conditions.

Events

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A space for debate and public discussion on territorial transformation processes, fragility and the means to activate antifragile resources.

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A hub of national and international relations and strategic alliances aimed at building stable and qualified research networks and open and collaborative production of research.

Milano MetroHUB Centre

Politecnico di Milano and UnHabitat for metropolitan challenges

#craftinAction

Milano MetroHUB Centre on Metropolitan Dynamics

Milano MetroHUB Centre on Metropolitan Dynamics is an initiative of Politecnico di Milano and CRAFT (Competence Center Anti-fragilieTerritories) in collaboration with UN-Habitat, . Milano MetroHUB Centre focuses on addressing the complex challenges of urbanisation and leveraging metropolitan areas' potential as engines of sustainable development and human prosperity. The collaboration seeks to develop innovative solutions through knowledge exchange, research, and collaboration. Our mission The Centre's mission is to focus on three main interconnected goals: 1) Metropolitan learning circle and high-level education and training: Design and deliver new tailored learning spaces and tools open to master students, civil servants, experts, policymakers  2) Science for/in metropolitan diplomacy: Contribute to making visible the new metropolitan dimension of the urban and its implications in the research and policy arenas involved in urban transitions while collaborating with international networks working on metropolitan subjects. 3) Metropolitan research and practice interface/ pilot projects: Promote and support innovative research projects inspired by critical theory and interested in addressing operative policy questions and problems by promoting design spaces generated at the intersection of academics, policymakers, and civil servants. What we can offer: • We provide specialised research, capacity building, and consultancy expertise for metropolitan cities and city-regions, focusing on trans-scalar processes, the role of urban design and planning, new built form types of metropolitan architecture, urbanity through collective landscapes rethinking urban borders.  • We offer a trans-disciplinary, design-oriented and place-based approach oriented to social impact.  • We share networks and relationships. • We can provide low-cost or pro-bono input to local authorities across the world.
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In Focus

Insights and recommended readings

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Our pilot projects

Anti-fragility Lab is CRAFT's incubator of ideas and a driving force of "projects" in the broadest sense practiced within DAStU, i.e. of strategies, visions and actions. In March 2024, we closed our first call for ideas, aimed at promoting, consolidating and financing exploratory practices and design and research experiments characterized by: • a notable methodological and process innovation • the promotion of partnerships with territorial and institutional actors • the development of products and tools capable of generating effective impacts (cultural, social, spatial, environmental) in the territories • a contribution to the capacity of public administration to face the challenges related to transition, in conditions of crisis and uncertainty The selected projects face specific challenges for the context of reference or area of intervention, but have in common the attention to the connected socio-spatial fragility dynamics. Among the admitted projects we find: • National Biodiversity Future Center - Planning biodiverse and antifragile cities by Maria Chiara Pastore in collaboration with CNR and local authorities • Italian atlas of deaths (and seriously injuried) on bicycles by Paolo Bozzuto (Coordinator), Fabio Manfredini, Emilio Guastamacchia • The Sea of Lecce by Federico Zanfi and Francesco Curci in collaboration with the Municipality of Lecce • School segregation by Marta Cordini (coordinator), Andrea Parma and Costanzo Ranci • Spatial regeneration for the ecological and digital transition in the Alpine macroregion - A pilot project for Valtellina in the framework of the European EUSALP strategy by Andrea Arcidiacono and Stefano Di Vita • ProdAction Production Places in Transition - The fragility of territories and ordinary spaces of production, logistics and work by Cristiana Mattioli (coordinator), Eugenio Morello • Hybrid socio-cultural spaces in marginal mountain areas by Federica Maria Rossi (Project Coordinator), Ilaria Mariotti The projects financed by the center: • anchor themselves to the concept of anti-fragility and critically interpret its challenges • contribute to the formation of knowledge, skills, tools, planning and research capabilities that the Center makes available to a wider audience made up of local and institutional actors • contribute to the Teaching Excellence program, thanks to the development of knowledge, skills, approaches, and tools capable of producing high-quality training offered by DAStU
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Open School

Spaces for learning and experimentation

#enablingMarginalTerritories

Summer School of the Laboratorio del Cammino 2025

ENABLE MADONIE is the eighth edition of the itinerant Summer School promoted by the Laboratorio del Cammino (LdC), an inter-university network of researchers that develops research and teaching projects aimed at exploring the possibilities of walking in urban planning and design. The goal of this eighth edition is to understand how walking, seeing, listening, and slowly and deeply entering places are essential practices for cultivating an “alternative gaze” on inner peripheral areas—one capable of going beyond statistical normalization and stereotypes about “peripherality”. Accompanied by professors, researchers, residents, and local actors, students will be guided to produce a place-based knowledge that is situated, plural, and co-produced in the Inner Area of the Madonie. This will involve hybridizing methodologies and forms of knowledge to critically and constructively reflect on new forms of interaction between humans and nature unfolding along the mountain ridge. Through the lens of Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES), participants will be encouraged to explore the values that connect people and nature within the area’s socio-ecological system. They will produce both relevant technical descriptions and conceptual maps of space in relational terms—highlighting conflicts and resistances, assembling data and perceptions, fragments and ferments of transformation.   The Summer School will take place from August 25 to September 4, 2025, and will consist of a walking journey across the territory, starting from Geraci Siculo and arriving in Cefalù (Palermo). A path from the "bone lands" of the Madonie hinterland to the "flesh territories" (Rossi Doria, 1958) of the Tyrrhenian coast, where participants will experience that “descending history” (Calvino, 1946) which has marginalized mountain-rural areas—bringing into question both the prevailing economic-cultural model and the alternative imaginaries produced along the route.   To apply, please send by Friday, June 6, 2025 an academic CV, a motivation letter, and two projects representative of your academic carrier, to the following email address: laboratoriodelcammino@gmail.com.
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Ampère 20

Our multipurpose headquarters

CRAFT's headquarters are located in Milan, via Ampere 20. It is a complex multifunctional space where higher education training, applied research and outreach come together and integrate. A building part of the university campus but open on/to the city, fueling continuous and open interaction between the university and society.

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