1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Pianificazione Territoriale, Urbanistica E Paesaggistico-Ambientale - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Meccanica (Mechanical Engineering) - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Design E Comunicazione - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Dell'Autoveicolo (Automotive Engineering) - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Informatica (Computer Engineering) - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Dell'Autoveicolo - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Electronic And Communications Engineering (Ingegneria Elettronica E Delle Comunicazioni) - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Dei Materiali - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Architettura (Architecture) - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Elettrica - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Aerospaziale - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Biomedica - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Chimica E Alimentare - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Civile - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Edile - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Energetica - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Meccanica - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Per L'Ambiente E Il Territorio - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Matematica Per L'Ingegneria - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Elettronica - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Informatica - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Fisica - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Del Cinema E Dei Mezzi Di Comunicazione - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Gestionale - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Gestionale - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Architettura - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Pianificazione Territoriale, Urbanistica E Paesaggistico-Ambientale - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Civil And Environmental Engineering - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Architettura - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Architettura (Architecture) - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Civil And Environmental Engineering - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Design E Comunicazione - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Electronic And Communications Engineering - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Aerospaziale - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Chimica E Alimentare - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Civile - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Dei Materiali - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Del Cinema E Dei Media Digitali - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Dell'Autoveicolo - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Dell'Autoveicolo (Automotive Engineering) - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Edile - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Elettrica - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Elettronica - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Energetica - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Fisica - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Gestionale - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Gestionale - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Meccanica - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Meccanica (Mechanical Engineering) - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Ingegneria Per L'Ambiente E Il Territorio - Torino 1st degree and Bachelor-level of the Bologna process in Matematica Per L'Ingegneria - Torino
This course is part of the Global Challenges catalogue, designed to equip students with the tools to address major present and future challenges with awareness, responsibility, and a collaborative mindset. The catalogue brings STEM disciplines together with the humanities and social sciences, addressing interdisciplinary topics through a critical approach attentive to the ethical, social, cultural, and environmental implications of proposed solutions. Teaching is built around active, team-based project work that develops design skills, transdisciplinary dialogue, and the capacity to contextualise and tackle complex problems. Each year, the catalogue opens with a lectio magistralis in English on a topical issue.
Conflict, Space, and Infrastructure responds to the Grandi Sfide call by addressing transversal issues at the intersection of society, politics, inequality, wellbeing, and inclusion. Through the lens of infrastructures, engineering, and spatial disciplines, it examines how conflict-affected environments shape and are shaped by broader social, ecological, and political processes, equipping future professionals to engage responsibly with global challenges.
The course opens a dedicated space of inquiry, reflection, and design practice on the entanglement of infrastructures, engineering, and conflict. Grounded in spatial disciplines but tailored to undergraduate engineering students, it explores how infrastructures, technologies, and built environments are not only vulnerable in conditions of crisis, but can also be deployed as instruments of control, occupation, and resistance.
Treating conflict as a persistent global condition and a terraforming force rather than an exceptional event, the course investigates how war, displacement, ecological fragility, and political violence intersect with technical and spatial systems. Students will examine how engineering knowledge from structural systems and construction logistics to energy grids and mobility networks interacts with, and is sometimes weaponised within, these processes.
Two perspectives frame the course: meridional thinking-in-action (working with, from, and across the Global South) and Mediterranean thinking-in-action (attentive to colonial residues, forced migration, and perpetual instability). Together, they situate technical expertise within cultural, ecological, and political debates, equipping students to act across disciplines and scales.
Through case studies from Lebanon, Palestine, South Africa, Rwanda, Colombia, Myanmar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and El Salvador, students contribute to a collective Archive of Conflict, Space, and Infrastructures Projects a repository of analysis, documentation, and counter-forensic practice that bridges individual and group learning while fostering new approaches to resilience, accountability, and spatial justice.
The proponents' experience in conflict-affected contexts, international research, and interdisciplinary teaching positions them to deliver this course with both academic rigour and practical insight.
prova
On completing the course, students will be able to:
Understand how engineering, spatial disciplines, and social sciences intersect in conflict-affected contexts, and the risks and opportunities for resilience these generate.
Analyse spatial power: the technical, spatial, and political dimensions of destruction, reconstruction, and displacement, and the use of infrastructures as instruments of control or exclusion.
Investigate critical geographies: the material and political dimensions of territorial occupation, ecological fragility, infrastructural violence, and mass displacement.
Apply counter-practices: deploy the rubble ground methodology as a design and technological response grounded in resilience, material reuse, and decolonial practice.
Collaborate across disciplines: strengthen teamwork, debate, and transdisciplinary skills across technical and humanistic fields.
Contribute to collective knowledge: produce evidence, design experiments, and spatial narratives for the shared Archive of Conflict, Space, and Infrastructures Projects.
Intervene ethically: connect technical and design work to broader ethical imperatives, addressing SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities), and SDG 16 (Peace and Justice).
None
None
The course opens with a lectio magistralis in English, delivered jointly for all Global Challenges courses, on a topical issue. It then develops the following themes:
The persistence of conflict: scales, proximities, and temporalities of protracted crises and structural violence.
Infrastructures of control and vulnerability: engineering systems as enablers of daily life and as targets, tools of occupation, surveillance, and securitisation.
Spaces of power and resistance: built environments as instruments of domination and as resources for recovery and situated counter-practices.
Ecological and technological intersections: resource scarcity, climate insecurity, and the politics of infrastructural violence.
The camp as political and technical space: displacement, containment, and the engineering of shelter.
The rubble ground methodology: integrating design and technology with political urgency to develop resilient and decolonial practices.
Critical case studies: analyses from the Global South and the Mediterranean as key sites of conflict, displacement, and decolonial struggle.
The course opens with a lectio magistralis in English, delivered jointly for all Global Challenges courses, on a topical issue. It then develops the following themes:
The persistence of conflict: scales, proximities, and temporalities of protracted crises and structural violence.
Infrastructures of control and vulnerability: engineering systems as enablers of daily life and as targets, tools of occupation, surveillance, and securitisation.
Spaces of power and resistance: built environments as instruments of domination and as resources for recovery and situated counter-practices.
Ecological and technological intersections: resource scarcity, climate insecurity, and the politics of infrastructural violence.
The camp as political and technical space: displacement, containment, and the engineering of shelter.
The rubble ground methodology: integrating design and technology with political urgency to develop resilient and decolonial practices.
Critical case studies: analyses from the Global South and the Mediterranean as key sites of conflict, displacement, and decolonial struggle.
The course unfolds in two macro-parts, corresponding to 6 CFU. Both are sustained by lectures, seminars, and workshops, and converge in the collective Archive of Conflict, Space, and Infrastructures Projects a living, navigable artefact rather than a static repository. The course draws on two reference works that model how complex political and technical material can be made spatially and temporally legible: Crawford and Joler's Calculating Empires (2023), a large-scale cartography of the co-evolution of technology and power since 1500, and the Deep City symposium platform (EPFL, 2021), which organises transversal themes across a navigable digital wall.
Part 1 Building the Archive (3 CFU) Students work in groups to assemble the empirical material of the course. Drawing on the cartographic logic of Calculating Empires, they document case studies, map infrastructural systems under conditions of conflict, and produce the spatial, visual, and textual evidence that populates the Archive. The output takes the form of a collective Miro board (or equivalent navigable digital surface): a layered cartography of conflicts, infrastructures, actors, materials, and timelines, legible across cases as well as within them. This part foregrounds counter-forensic methods, fieldwork-at-a-distance, and the rubble ground methodology as a practice grounded in resilience, material reuse, and decolonial engagement.
Theoretical foundations for documentation (1 CFU) methods of spatial analysis, counter-forensics, critical cartography, and situated research in conflict-affected contexts.
Case-study construction (2 CFU) group work on selected geographies (Lebanon, Palestine, South Africa, Rwanda, Colombia, Myanmar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, El Salvador), producing original entries for the Archive.
Part 2 Reading the Archive (3 CFU) Students return to the material gathered in Part 1 and interrogate it through critical lenses: meridional and Mediterranean thinking-in-action, infrastructural violence, necropolitics, the camp as political and technical space. The output is a set of short video clips three to five minutes each produced by each group as situated readings of the Archive. Following the Deep City model, these clips function as visual essays: tightly scripted, theoretically grounded interpretations that move from documentation to argument. Together they extend the Archive into a second register, in which engineering and spatial evidence is recomposed as political and ethical narrative.
Critical lenses (1.5 CFU) seminars introducing the theoretical and political frameworks that structure the reading of the Archive.
Cross-case interpretation and short-form production (1.5 CFU) comparative analysis across Archive entries, scripting and production of short video clips, and collective dissemination through screenings, roundtables, or online formats.
The course unfolds in two macro-parts, corresponding to 6 CFU. Both are sustained by lectures, seminars, and workshops, and converge in the collective Archive of Conflict, Space, and Infrastructures Projects a living, navigable artefact rather than a static repository. The course draws on two reference works that model how complex political and technical material can be made spatially and temporally legible: Crawford and Joler's Calculating Empires (2023), a large-scale cartography of the co-evolution of technology and power since 1500, and the Deep City symposium platform (EPFL, 2021), which organises transversal themes across a navigable digital wall.
Part 1 Building the Archive (3 CFU) Students work in groups to assemble the empirical material of the course. Drawing on the cartographic logic of Calculating Empires, they document case studies, map infrastructural systems under conditions of conflict, and produce the spatial, visual, and textual evidence that populates the Archive. The output takes the form of a collective Miro board (or equivalent navigable digital surface): a layered cartography of conflicts, infrastructures, actors, materials, and timelines, legible across cases as well as within them. This part foregrounds counter-forensic methods, fieldwork-at-a-distance, and the rubble ground methodology as a practice grounded in resilience, material reuse, and decolonial engagement.
Theoretical foundations for documentation (1 CFU) methods of spatial analysis, counter-forensics, critical cartography, and situated research in conflict-affected contexts.
Case-study construction (2 CFU) group work on selected geographies (Lebanon, Palestine, South Africa, Rwanda, Colombia, Myanmar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, El Salvador), producing original entries for the Archive.
Part 2 Reading the Archive (3 CFU) Students return to the material gathered in Part 1 and interrogate it through critical lenses: meridional and Mediterranean thinking-in-action, infrastructural violence, necropolitics, the camp as political and technical space. The output is a set of short video clips three to five minutes each produced by each group as situated readings of the Archive. Following the Deep City model, these clips function as visual essays: tightly scripted, theoretically grounded interpretations that move from documentation to argument. Together they extend the Archive into a second register, in which engineering and spatial evidence is recomposed as political and ethical narrative.
Critical lenses (1.5 CFU) seminars introducing the theoretical and political frameworks that structure the reading of the Archive.
Cross-case interpretation and short-form production (1.5 CFU) comparative analysis across Archive entries, scripting and production of short video clips, and collective dissemination through screenings, roundtables, or online formats.
A curated list will include:
Abourahme, N. (2025) The Time Beneath the Concrete.
Berlanda, T. et al. (eds.) (2023) Landwalks across South Africa and Palestine.
Boano, C. (2021) Beyond Violence: Toward a Politics of Inhabitation.
Boano, C. (2024) Cittΰ: Architettura guerrilla.
Cassano, F. (2012) Southern Thought and Other Essays on the Mediterranean.
Graham, S. (2010) Cities Under Siege.
Mbembe, A. (2019) Necropolitics.
Weizman, E. (2026) Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide.
Selected articles on infrastructure, displacement, and reconstruction in conflict settings.
A curated list will include:
Abourahme, N. (2025) The Time Beneath the Concrete.
Berlanda, T. et al. (eds.) (2023) Landwalks across South Africa and Palestine.
Boano, C. (2021) Beyond Violence: Toward a Politics of Inhabitation.
Boano, C. (2024) Cittΰ: Architettura guerrilla.
Cassano, F. (2012) Southern Thought and Other Essays on the Mediterranean.
Graham, S. (2010) Cities Under Siege.
Mbembe, A. (2019) Necropolitics.
Weizman, E. (2026) Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide.
Selected articles on infrastructure, displacement, and reconstruction in conflict settings.
Nessuno;
None;
Modalita di esame: Elaborato progettuale in gruppo;
Exam: Group project;
...
Assessment is integrated and combines collective and individual work across the two parts of the course:
Archive contribution (group, 40%) the case-study entry produced in Part 1, evaluated as part of the collective Miro cartography: spatial analysis, documentation, and counter-forensic material.
Short video clip (group, with individual roles declared, 40%) the Part 2 visual essay, in which each member's authorial contribution (research, scripting, editing, narration, visual production) is named and individually assessed alongside the collective output.
Participation in seminars and workshops (20%) active contribution and debate across both parts.
No alternative assessment is foreseen for non-attending students, given the course's workshop-based and collaborative nature.
Gli studenti e le studentesse con disabilita o con Disturbi Specifici di Apprendimento (DSA), oltre alla segnalazione tramite procedura informatizzata, sono invitati a comunicare anche direttamente al/la docente titolare dell'insegnamento, con un preavviso non inferiore ad una settimana dall'avvio della sessione d'esame, gli strumenti compensativi concordati con l'Unita Special Needs, al fine di permettere al/la docente la declinazione piu idonea in riferimento alla specifica tipologia di esame.
Exam: Group project;
Assessment is integrated and combines collective and individual work across the two parts of the course:
Archive contribution (group, 40%) the case-study entry produced in Part 1, evaluated as part of the collective Miro cartography: spatial analysis, documentation, and counter-forensic material.
Short video clip (group, with individual roles declared, 40%) the Part 2 visual essay, in which each member's authorial contribution (research, scripting, editing, narration, visual production) is named and individually assessed alongside the collective output.
Participation in seminars and workshops (20%) active contribution and debate across both parts.
Given the course's workshop-based and collaborative nature non-attending students will only be able to achieve limited learning objectives, which will be tested through a hand written exam and a maximum grade of 26/30.
In addition to the message sent by the online system, students with disabilities or Specific Learning Disorders (SLD) are invited to directly inform the professor in charge of the course about the special arrangements for the exam that have been agreed with the Special Needs Unit. The professor has to be informed at least one week before the beginning of the examination session in order to provide students with the most suitable arrangements for each specific type of exam.
