Railroad Infrastructure as Urban Aggregator
Rebuilding the Edge is a faculty-led workshop experience for MIT students that will take place in June 2022 in the Italian region of Abruzzo. Through an on-site experience, the workshop will invite students to think about the future of Italian inner and southern areas, as well as the relationship between regional infrastructure projects and small communities affected by them.
Rebuilding the Edge results from a partnership between MIT’s Urban Risk Lab, the MIT-Italy Program, and Fondazione Ferrovie Dello Stato Italiano–the Italian state railway system Foundation. The workshop will focus on the issues faced by small municipalities along the Sulmona–Carpinone rail line, where a public-private partnership is beginning to revive rail activity after decades of disinvestment. For two-and-a-half weeks, students will have the opportunity to experience the territory traversed by the rail line, working out of a popup research outpost within the recently renovated station at Roccaraso.
Student enrollment is limited to approximately 12 students. Students interested in learning through a culturally immersive experience are highly encouraged to apply and bring their area of expertise to the issues the workshop will tackle. Culinary experiences ride on historic rail cars, hikes through nature trails, walk through historic urban settlements and much more will give a breadth of understanding to the work developed at the research station. Rebuilding the Edge will allow students to engage with the particular territories and circumstances along one rail line in the Italian Apennines, and take away larger lessons about methodologies of design research, and the degrees to which design can play a role in addressing issues of social consequence.
Read more about Rebuilding the Edge PDF here.
HOW TO APPLY
Submit the following to this Google Form by March 10th
1. Curriculum Vitae.
2. Statement of interest 250 words max.
3. Only Arch. and DUSP to submit a sample of work.