Winter Field Studio 2016 in USA: New York (NY); Miami, Gainesville (Florida)
Sea Level rise and the future of coastal urban settlements
evolving concepts in urban and cultural adaptation to changing environments

28 February - 12 March 2016 - Deadline Registration Feb 10th


UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Urban Quality and Urban Cultura, notably in Africa, Sapienza University of Rome
Chair-holder: Prof. Lucio Barbera

Consortium for HydroGenerated Urbanism University of Florida, School of Architecture
co-director: Prof. Martha Kohen

Dipartimento di Architettura e Progetto, Sapienza Università di Roma


Scientific Committee and other participating academic institutions will be confirmed soon.
The issue of the Workshop is one of the greatest importance in every Continent; it reaches the highest urgency in many countries, expecially in developing countries, not only but notably in Africa, as for the aim and scope of our UNESCO Chair. In this general frame the Workshop will concentrate its attention onto the “Miami aquatic future” intended as the subject for probing the possible Sea-level-rise adaptive strategies of a modern multifunctional and multicultural metropolis. In fact, in Miami the variety, the extension and the complexity of the relations between the human settlements and the water environments form the most valuable and suitable World Field-Laboratory for studying in one integrated Workshop the full palette of problems that can be found with lesser density, but not greater intensity, in many other coastal or lagoon zone of our Planet. The specific problems that can be fruitfully investigated in the Miami area represent the most significant examples of the worldwide problems of see level rise and of its related effects cast onto urban structures (financial centres, tourist settlements, leisure centres etc.) and infrastructures (hydraulic, vehicular, energy production plants including atomic energy production, etc.). Therefore the expected outcomes of the Workshop will be useful to better define general strategies of:
Adaptation of the existing settlement and productive systems.
Protection and defence of historical places and natural singularities. Substitution of urban, functional and residential typologies.
Retreat and environmental migration to safer territories and urban locations.