ADD: Programme for a New Operational Logic
1 | ADD > ADDING: Addition/combination/multiplication
ADD is the acronym for the dAD’s PhD program - UNIGE. As the term itself suggests, ADD is a space of conjunction and conjugation; a catalyst of scientific and research experiences, associated with the disciplines of space and product and its relationship with the procedural transformations currently underway. Under the fields of Architecture and Design its structure brings together different disciplinary areas in a common project of analysis and inter-disciplinary investigation. A project aimed at addressing the new phenomena of change - social, cultural, spatial and material - that affect today’s everyday environments and their relationship with the information society and knowledge.
2 | ADD-GOA: Genova - Research laboratory, multiscalar laboratory
ADD is proposed as a dynamic and "restless" space - active and proactive, creative and generative - which aimed to combine analytical rigor and proactive will. Unlike other academic projects, more specialized, more strictly canonical and/ or disciplinary, ADD defines itself as a plural space of research, exploration and prospecting: a space aimed at a basic research and applied at the same time, in which the "project" - urban and architectural, technological or environmental, conceptual or industrial - becomes a central topic. A great multi-scale "laboratory" more than an essentially scholastic structure.
3 | ADD-MTI: Multiplicity - Transversality - Interactivity
The richness of the ADD Course is manifested through its multifaceted and polyphonic condition - multiple and multi-scale: a "transversal" vocation evident both in the lines of research and in the thematic areas that compose them, intended to address the new contemporary scenarios, but also the new thought structures, the new production strategies (and technologies) and the new keys of representation and communication that build today the new project disciplines paradigms. Advanced knowledge and transversal thinking want to be active vectors of mobilization of this multi-approach profile that defines a look, holistic and transversal, innovative and proactive.
4 | ADD-AT - Thematic Areas: a plot of intersections
The basic structure of the ADD doctorate is defined by a flexible matrix referring to four major thematic areas, of inter-scalar (and inter-section) approach.
1. A first area (New Urban and Territorial Strategies Policies and Perspectives) which aim to articulate research oriented towards new scenarios - and geographies - whose field of action concerns concepts such as those of multi-city (or multi-territories), smart cities, resilient contexts or advanced landscapes.
2. A second area (Theory of Design) which aim to articulate research focused on the construction of a new theoretical-critical basis of analysis whose field of investigation revolves around concepts such as cognitive taxonomy or historical-holistic gaze.
3. A third area (Strategies and Technologies for Sustainability and Systemic Design) which aim to articulate research based on more operational approaches, that compose possible research topics with a new technological, material and productive capacity and a new ecological sensitivity: heritage/innovation, environmental techniques and operational strategies or interactive technologies.
4. A fourth area (Visual languages and communication) which aim to articulate the research most interested in exploring a new field of recording and expression, in which concepts such as "digital info-graphs" "n-mapping" or "networked spaces" are particularly decisive.
5 | ADD-FR: Research Strands
Associated with these transversal areas of research are several strands of argument.
1. The strands most involved in 1 area concern the dynamics of territorial structuring and coastal development, urban recycling, conviviality, temporality and public space and/or flexible planning, with key terms such as multi-city, med.net coast & complex coast, re-citying, co-cities & t-cities, land-links, advanced landscapes, resili(g)ent contexts, new planning, new habitat(s), etc.
2. The main strands involved in 2 area concern questions of theory, epistemology, taxonomy or historical interpretation, with key terms such as cognitive sciences, advanced knowledge, contemporary criticism, systematic forms, design structures and invariants, epistemology, etc.
3. The strands most involved in 3 area concern strategies related to industrial processes and eco-productive systems, environmental and digital technologies, new interactive devices, with key terms such as heritage/innovation, operational strategies, eco-matters & reactive matters, digital interfaces, eco-designs, active sustainability, social design, etc.
4. The main strands involved in 4 area concern processes associated with new network connectivity but also with a new type of evolutionary representation/simulation (real and virtual), linked with key terms such as n-maps, multilayering records, network collectivities, real time data, net. Com, (ex)changes, etc.
6 | ADD, una piattaforma attiva: offerta formativa e scommessa culturale
The ADD PhD course is proposed as a "research laboratory", but also as a possible "cultural platform". The training offer is in fact aimed not only to provide a good educational program but, above all, to build an active space for scientific comparison and project bet, aimed at multiplying the offers and opportunities for debate, meeting and intellectual comparison, combining them with opportunities for methodological and instrumental study. The training program is thus configured as a variable grid of different formats, combining different types and experiences of analysis, comparison and proposal.
1. Training modules (research methodology), which aim to deepen research tools and structures (Linguistics and International Research Glossary / Computer Science and Data Processing Tools / Research Management and Survey Tools and Methodologies / Exploitation of Research Products and Intellectual Property).
2. Readings (Theories, practices and design cultures), conceived as critical readings and focus-discussions.
3. Workshops and extempore (Methods and tools for the project), oriented to shared project production.
4. Expert Conferences and specialized seminars, which aim to make a comparison with particular voices and themes of investigation.
5. Master-classes and transversal conferences (International meetings), oriented to the scientific comparison.
6. Sharing forums (Open Tables) & General Reviews, intended as spaces of collective exchange.
The activity is thus conceived as a wide menu of offers and experiences (fixed or variable modules) divided into a weekly calendar program, with a weighted combination of formats (more open or narrower, more specific or more general). A strong point of the ADD Course program is its "field opening", its vocation "between" (transversal and transferring), beyond conventional languages and norms, as a set of researches and voices capable of combining scientific-cultural creativity and social responsibility.
7 | ADD-Meeting Point
The program of the ADD Course integrates with opportunities emerging from the desire to establish itself as a virtual node inductor and generator of scientific exchanges: a meeting-point, engine of new energies at an international level. Symposium, conferences and major international events such as Med-Net (aimed at new territorial perspectives in the Mediterranean); Rebel-Matters (on the processes of creative avant-garde in modern architecture and advanced architecture); I(r)F. International Research Forum (on the new dynamics of architectural research in European postgraduate programs), contribute to defining the ADD Course not only as a host subject ("amphitryon space") but, also, as a national reference for some aspects of research and sensitive approach to a strategic-empathic reading of the city and the project, as open systems rather than as formal and/or rigid disciplinary drawings.
8 | ADD-GLOCAL. Local involvement / global projection
The aspiration of the ADD Course is to be a research space attentive both to global phenomena and disciplinary comparison, both to local realities, more specifically contextual. The involvement of the ADD Course with the Ligurian territory (municipal administration, civil associations, UNIGE scientific community) and its operational vocation are combined with a global, international projection, evident in its cosmopolitan activity (educational and scientific) the presence of non-EU doctoral candidates and the growing demand for applications in the European context (particularly within the Latin Arc), with research projects and scientific collaboration with Spain (IAAC-Barcelona, ESARQ-UIC Barcelona, ESA-Sevilla, or ETSAM, Madrid), France (ENSAM-Montpellier, GERPHAU-Paris) and the United States (FIU-Florida), implemented in several research projects shared at national level, such as the PRIN 2012-15 Recycle Italy, and at European level (Erasmus Knowledge-nnochain-Marie Curie-2014, KAAU-Knowledge Alliance 2015) in which the ADD Course plays a decisive role.
9 | ADD-Community: Teaching Board, PhD students and Alumni
The active participation of the teaching board and the PhD students themselves is expressed not only in the didactic activity of the Course but also through the mobilization of research groups (PhD students and teachers) in the different meeting projects described, as well as other scientific, national and international proposals (and calls). The collaboration between teachers and PhD students in shared research spaces or in collaborative networks is combined with a strong idea of community, particularly important in the educational and cultural proposal of the Department of Architecture and Design, with the presence of "doctorates- alumni" gathered in particularly active groups .
10 | Dissemination and Diffusion
The scientific production of teachers and research activity must be capable of generating cultural value: generating not only knowledge, but stimulating and activating promotion and development actions. In this sense, the creative and cultural diffusion, in the field of research as investigation, but also as exploration, is as important as the scientific diffusion itself. This cultural statement is reflected today in the involvement of the ADD Course in various national and international dissemination platforms (LIST-Trento, Actar-Barcelona-New York, ARACNE, Rome, Urban-Next-Barcelona etc.) and in the growing possibility of transforming many of the theses and researches carried out in "products" of global scientific dissemination, but also of cultural participation, visible in a dynamic website and, above all, in maintaining the presence of the ADD Course in the social and digital spaces of exchange.