ON ARCHITECTURE 2021
FACING THE FUTURE – NEW CHALLENGES
9th International Conference and Exhibition
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Gallery of Science and Technology
Belgrade, Serbia
3-4 December 2021
elena longhin, KEYNOTER
Elena Longhin, PhD is a practicing architect, landscape urbanist and researcher. Founder and director of the AA Terrain Lab Visiting School.
THE MACHINE IN THE MOUNTAIN
TERRITORIES OF HYDROPOWER IN THE PIAVE BASIN
Abstract
Longhin’s lecture is an examination of the most engineered hydro basin in Europe: the Piave River. Longhin will explore the interplay of modernity and environmental transformation in the Italian north-east hydroelectric landscapes of the Veneto region. Focusing on the territorial, urban and social implications of the politics of exploitation of water, the lecture explores the rationalities through which water is abstracted, appropriated, accumulated and used across the region. It seeks an understanding of the centrality of water management, hydro-politics and engineering in the Italian process of modernization and development, exploring their capacity to transform the territory.
By shifting urbanism focus into large ‘operationalized landscapes’, through the lens of landscape as a ‘way of seeing’, working and reconstituting knowledge, the work aims at empowering territorial research as a design tool.
In the midst of the ongoing multiplicity of crises, Longhin argues for a widening need to describe the machinic territory as a way through which re-draw the medium, a common framework within which spatial relations and global interactions are deployed. This could allow to elaborate explanatory visual narratives in the urbanized world ecology that provide alternative praxes, future coexisting strategies to inhabit the territory as well as reassess historical perspectives.
Bio
Elena Longhin, PhD is a practicing architect, landscape urbanist and researcher. Longhin’s work focuses on the intersection of architecture and landscape urbanism, with geography, urban political ecology and environmental studies. Her research explores the idea of a territorial practice which acknowledges the inherently conflicting dynamics driving human occupation, be it urban or remote. Currently, she is a Post-Doc Research fellow at the IUAV University of Venice where she is researching the conditions of inhabitation in the venetian territory and its lagoon. Her works have been published in both printed and digital media, and include exhibits at the Venice Biennales, Milan Triennale, as has been showcased in galleries in Japan, Chile and Hong Kong. Longhin teaches at the Architectural Association, at the IUAV, and has led a variety of visiting Programmes internationally in Pyongyang, Myanmar, Spain, Italy and Albania.
After receiving her March in Architecture from the IUAV she worked with several practices such as Secchi-Viganò and OMA, in Italy and Argentina. Longhin is also a graduate of the Landscape Urbanism Programme of the AA where she has taught both at the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and currently leads the Visiting School Terrain Lab.