Symposium September 18 - 19
Join us in Delft on September 18 - 19 at this symposium about urban design!
As cities along rivers, deltas, lagoons, and coasts face increasing ecological fragility and social vulnerability, the urgency to reframe the urban condition through water becomes ever more pressing. These territories are shaped by a convergence of geological, hydrological, environmental, and anthropogenic pressures—forces that amplify multi-risk conditions and challenge conventional planning approaches and theoretical understanding. This symposium invites scholars, designers, planners, and researchers to explore the land-water threshold as a fertile site for experimentation, adaptation, and imagination.
The land-water threshold is understood here as a liminal and porous interface where flows of people, goods, ecologies, and cultures converge. These thresholds are not static boundaries, but dynamic interfaces where risks accumulate and possibilities emerge. The symposium invites rethinking land-water thresholds as experimental grounds for rethinking governance models, design principles, and socio-environmental narratives.
This two-day event will engage with multi-risk urbanism through methods such as participatory mapping, scenario-building, and speculative design. Contributions are invited that interrogate the relational, temporal, and narrative dimensions of water in urban environments, aiming to build a more inclusive and fluid understanding of space. We invite participants to bring in selected case studies that might reflect on questions such as: what is multi-risk? What are the challenges posed by water in different settings? What kind of new design patterns and/or water grammars we can identify that respond to the multirisk challenges across the land-water continuum? How do we map this liminal space and all its associated risks across the land-water threshold?
How can urban planners and designers intervene in these fluctuating zones to support ecological balance, social equity, and adaptive living?
We welcome extended abstracts (600–800 words) that speak to one or more of the following themes:
- Land-Water Threshold: Designing the Edge
How do shifting boundaries challenge conventional territorial logics?
- Water as a carrier of stories
What stories, rituals, and symbolic practices are embedded in water cities and how do they inform adaptive design?
- Mapping water risks along the land-water continuum
How can mapping evolve from a descriptive tool into a critical and speculative act?
- Water a laboratory for future imaginaries
In what ways can the urbanization of water become a site of imaginative experimentation for more adaptive and relational futures?
- Publicness and new ways of living with Water
What forms of amphibious, floating, and resilient (public) spaces and habitats can emerge from a deeper understanding of water’s dynamics?
- Water as a geopolitical space
How can planning practices engage with water as a contested geopolitical space shaped by climate and infrastructural histories?
Contact: p.demartino@tudelft.nl and pdemartino@iuav.it
This event is a MIRACLE initiative in cooperation with TU Delft.
MIRACLE - Multi-risk Integrated Resilience Approach for Coastal Landscapes and Environments - is a research project coordinated by Prof. Francesco Musco and Denis Maragno from University IUAV of Venice that explores innovative strategies to tackle multi-risk challenges in urban and metropolitan territories shaped by water. The project adopts an integrated, participatory, and multi-scalar approach, understanding risk not as an isolated phenomenon, but as a systemic condition resulting from the interaction of climatic, geomorphological, and socio-economic factors. MIRACLE unfolds across a series of territorial transects — from Verona to Venice, from Rimini to the Po Delta, and from Bagnoli to Castellammare di Stabia — selected for their high vulnerability to water-related phenomena, heatwaves, and a range of cross-cutting risks. The research moves along two main axes: on one hand, the development of complex knowledge frameworks enriched by perceptual maps co-produced with local actors; on the other, the creation of strategic maps responding to the challenges of multi-risk conditions. Through a series of urban laboratories, MIRACLE fosters co-design processes where public space becomes a key testing ground for hybrid solutions that integrate climate adaptation, urban regeneration, and social innovation. Among the project’s outputs are thematic maps, a storymap, a catalogue of adaptive measures, and an atlas for multi-risk adaptation. MIRACLE ultimately proposes a new grammar for reading and transforming the contemporary landscapes of risk.
You can find out more about MIRACLE here.