PhD Workshop “Scenarios and counter-histories as research tools” by Ludovico Centis
Thursday, January 11, 2024, 09.00-13.30, Room 107 IfEU (Belvederer Allee 5) and hybrid
To register: please write a short email to Galyna Sukhomud at galyna.sukhomud[at]uni-weimar.de indicating whether you participate online or on-site.
Ludovico Centis is an architect, founder of the office The Empire, and Assistant Professor in Urbanism at the University of Trieste. His research focuses on the ways in which individuals and institutions, as well as desires and power, shape cities and landscapes. Recent books include The Lake of Venice. A scenario for Venice and its lagoon (2022, co-authored with Lorenzo Fabian), They must have enjoyed building here: Reyner Banham and Buffalo (2021) and A parallel of ruins and landscapes (2019). Contact: ludovico.centis[at]dia.units.it
Workshop Outline
We cannot explore every possible future, but we need to reduce complexity to be able to handle it. And this is where the scenario comes into play. Scenarios do not describe just one future, but several possible, desirable or even undesirable futures. Scenario writing is not just a planning tool, but also an effective learning tool, as it helps to understand development logic and to clarify driving forces, key factors, and actors.
Session I. Thursday, January 11, 2024 – 09.00-11.00 “Manual of Decolonization” Regardless of the way the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may evolve, the possibility of a complete or partial evacuation of the settlements in the Occupied Territories does exist. The “Manual of Decolonization” originates from the report of precise strategies of colonization. In a more accurate way, it is a counter-manual replying to the 1984 handbook published by the Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing titled “Building and Development in the Mountain Regions”.
Session II. Thursday, January 11, 2024 – 11.30-13.30 “A world without man”
First the Trinity test that took place in the desert of New Mexico on July 16, 1945, and then, more especially, the events of August 6 to 9 that same year changed the destiny of mankind forever. If the intense and rapid industrialization that occurred between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—which in some countries, such as Japan, took only a few decades—pushed many writers and philosophers to talk of a man detached or alienated from the world, the Atomic Age introduced for the first time, and on a global scale, the scenario of a world without man.