The AA

Terrain Lab: Geobodies

Programmes

AA Visiting School

Terrain Lab: Geobodies

AA VS Terrain Lab 2024. Photo: S. Niewiejska.

Dates

Summer 2026

Brief

TRAJECTORY 2 - LIMINAL LANDS

Terrain Lab 2024 will continue to explore the lagoon of Venice, one of the most delicate intertidal ecosystems. In this new trajectory of study, Geobodies, we will consider soaking silts, moving margins and salty states, critically reflecting on liminality and processes of formation, preservation and loss of wetland ecologies and their externalities.

Considering collective agency operating at the intersection of anthroposphere, biosphere and geosphere, the course will inquire into the nature of the Venice lagoon, dissecting both its historic anthropogenic modifications and contemporary alterations. Seeking a pedagogy that understands design as a means to research, disclose, represent and question the various processes involving transitional territories, the workshop develops methods of mapping, surveying and recording transitional landscapes, envisioning strategies of care for water ecologies. The workshop explores alternative modes of territorial representation through the use of transmedia mapping, questioning how new approaches to ecological governance could emerge from urbanism and landscape design.

Terrain LAB employs a working methodology that bridges architectural studies with a landscape urbanism approach, integrating urban political ecology, environmental, cultural and media studies. This approach is further enriched by contributions from experts specialising in environmental humanities, ecology, heritage and climate change. The programme will consist of guided visits, masterclasses, guest lectures, workshops, individual tutorials, site recording sessions and performances led by experienced tutors and guest lecturers.

Geobodies will engage in interdisciplinary experimentation, where participants will investigate ways of mapping, video-making, sound recording, photography, performative arts and food practices, bringing diverse but complementary perspectives on the ecology of the lagoon. In doing so, the programme aims to develop new modes of representation of Venice, working with the idea of ‘Rights of Nature’ and extending to the concept of the ‘many lagoons’, both from a perspective of a more-than-human and more-than-city lagoon, supporting the formation of a legal personhood for the Lagoon of Venice and the broader hydroscape connected to it.

PROMINENT FEATURES OF THE WORKSHOP/ SKILLS DEVELOPED

Learn a methodology which has the capacity to bridge architectural studies and landscape urbanism with political ecology, environmental humanities, arts, cultural and visual studies.
Develop the theoretical, methodological and representational means to address the emerging social, ecological and geopolitical complexities that characterise wetlands, lagoon environments and sea-level rise that threatens urban spaces.
Engage with the concepts of more-than-wet ontologies and theory regarding technical wet-lands and approaches to hydroscapes.
Theoretical lectures on ecology, preservation, landscape morphology, local and cultural practices.
Learn how to use GIS software, source data collection, develop cartographic representations, combine geospatial knowledge and tools with design methodologies, media and curatorial studies.
Participate in explorations of the Venice Lagoon with local and scientific expertise, and take part in hands-on experiences like workshops, walkscapes, kayaking and other activities.

Fees

• £60 — mandatory, non-refundable deposit (paid on application) that covers the AA Digital Membership for a year and is deducted from the total programme fee.

• £765 — Standard Programme Fee (including a 1-year AA Digital Membership)

• £705— AA Member Fee

• £564 —AA Full-time Student Fee

• £720 — Fee for Full-time students of Melbourne University

Fees do not include flights or accommodation, but accommodation options can be advised. Students need to bring their own laptops and digital equipment.

Scholarships

A limited number of partial scholarships are available to full-time TU Delft students.

Please note that this course is accredited for students of IUAV University (six credits). IUAV students are encouraged to speak to Prof. Angelo Maggi for more information about claiming these credits. A limited number of bursaries are reserved for IUAV students, please write to Elena.Longhin@aaschool.ac.uk with your institutional email to receive the dedicated codes of registration, your fee will be altered upon AA log in during the registration.

All scholarship applicants must pay £60 deposit that covers a one-year AA Digital Membership, deducted from the programme fee. If your scholarship application is unsuccessful, you keep the membership, but the deposit is non-refundable.

Scholarships cannot be combined for those eligible for multiple schemes; only the one type of fee reduction will be applied.

Applications

APPLICATIONS FOR THIS PROGRAMME WILL BE OPEN SHORTLY.

Eligibility

The programme is open to current landscape, architecture, and design students, PhD candidates and young professionals, as well as to those studying humanities, geography, philosophy, material and cultural studies. Software Requirements: QGIS or ARCMAP, Adobe Creative Suite, AutoCad or Rhino.

Visas

All participants travelling from abroad are responsible for securing any visa required and are advised to contact their home embassy early. An official letter can be issued by AA Visiting School confirming enrolment onto the programme once an applicant has settled their deposit payment, this letter can be used when applying for a visa as supporting documents when entering the UK.

Insurance

All participants are responsible for securing their own travel and health insurance. Please ensure that your travel insurance also covers your personal belongings i.e. laptop, equipment, tools, passport etc. The AA takes no responsibility for lost/ stolen property.

Biographies

BIOGRAPHIES

ELENA LONGHIN, PhD, is an architect (OAPCC Venezia and ARB London) and researcher based between Venice and Delft, the Netherlands, working at the intersection of architecture, urbanism and political ecology. She holds a MArch and Ph.D from IUAV and graduated from the AA Landscape Urbanism Programme. She is a post-doc researcher in Urbanism and studio mentor (Transitional Territories) at TU Delft. As an architect she collaborated with Studio Secchi-Viganó and OMA, among others. She has taught at the AA, IUAV of Venice, EPFL in Lausanne, TU Delft, the Netherlands. Her work has been exhibited internationally as part of the Venice Biennale and the Milan Triennale, as well as in the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Chile, Japan and Hong Kong. Elena’s research received commendations from the Manuel de Solà–Morales Award and from the Italian Ferraro Prize. She has been a member of the Habitat Research Centre at EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland, and is now an affiliated researcher of the THE NEW INSTITUTE – Center for Environmental Humanities (NICHE) of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Since 2016, she is the Programme Head of the AA VS Terrain Lab.

LUCA IUORIO, PhD, graduated in architecture from IUAV University of Venice, where he also obtained a doctorate in urbanism. He is currently an assistant professor of spatial design of future deltaic systems in the faculty of Architecture and the Built environment at TU Delft, the Netherlands. His academic work ranges from the study of the territorial dimension of engineering infrastructures to the design of spatial interventions to adapt to climate change. Particularly interested in understanding and explaining how technology affects our society and shapes the places where we live, his scientific investigation makes use of physical modelling, scenario making, critical mapping, ethnographic fieldworks, archival research and site-specific designs.

LUCIA REBOLINO is an architect and research-based computational designer, currently working as a researcher at Forensic Architecture in London and as a teaching associate at Columbia University GSAPP. She conceives her practice as a space where different branches of science and design can conceptualise, critique, visualise and provoke new counter-cartography aesthetics. Lucia has also worked at the Center for Spatial Research in New York, exploring investigative projects through data visualisation. She has lectured at design schools, including Delft University of Technology, Architectural Association, Columbia GSAPP, and the Politecnico di Milano and Torino. Her writing has appeared in publications such as e-flux Architecture, ETH Delus and Routledge. She holds a Master of Architecture from the Politecnico di Torino and a Master of Science in Computational Design Practices from Columbia University, where she received an award for innovative use of computing media in design research.

AMINA CHOUAIRI is an Italian-Moroccan PhD student in Urbanism at Università Iuav di Venezia. She holds a Master of Science with honours in Landscape Architecture (TUDelft) and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture (Politecnico di Milano). Amina collaborated with several landscape and urban design firms such as Arup, Vogt and Openfabric. Since 2019, Amina has been researching the Venice Lagoon complex and contradictory transitional territory, exploring the debated relations among its cultures and natures. Together with fellows and collaborators, she has co-curated multiple outdoor explorations for cultural institutions (such as TBA21-Academy and Ocean Space, Istituto Svizzero di Roma and the Venice Design Biennale) and lagoon neophytes (international and local students and researchers) while presenting and mediating research contents through public programs and events. Amina co-runs How Do We Meet, a community project creating new women-led networks in Venice.

ANIELLA SOPHIE GOLDINGER is an interdisciplinary spatial researcher and educator at the Institute of Architecture, Technische Universität Berlin. Her doctoral research is centred around oceanic hinterlands and the extended urban fabric of polar territories. Her work explores cartographic and fieldwork-based methodologies to critically investigate relationships and frictions within landscapes and their broader socio-cultural and geopolitical context. She holds a master’s degree in landscape architecture, specialising in Arctic and sub-Arctic territories, from the Oslo School of Architecture and a BA in architecture from the Royal Danish Academy, School of Architecture.

COLLABORATORS

METAGOON is a film archive and research tool initiated by Matteo Stocco in 2015. It holds several testimonies of, around, and about the Venice Lagoon, where scientists, experts, professors and inhabitants navigate their understandings of the lagoon territory. Metagoon seeks to cast a light on the knowledge, traditions, transformations and contradictions of the lagoon ecosystem, creating a map in which borders are outlined by interviews, stories and silent observations.

Find out more at https://metagoon.net/it.

BARENA BIANCA was formed in the Summer of 2018 by Fabio Cavallari and Pietro Consolandi as a shirtwearing activist group in the Venetian Lagoon, striving to bring to light many of its ecological and sociological issues, adopting the barena (typical venetian salt marsh, essential to the survival of the city) as its emblem. Barena Bianaca is characterised by an anti-mimetic poetic approach, a willingly dysfunctional camouflage, refusing to disappear. It seeks to emerge in every situation, to be clearly visible, increasingly impossible to ignore. Its work mostly happens in public spaces and formalises in hybrid collaborative actions, installations and happenings communicated mainly through video.

Find out more at @barenabianca and https://www.barenabianca.earth/.

HOW LIKE A REEF is an observatory, a laboratory, a coalition of research and projects, and a coming together of knowledge practices, artistic, scientific and otherwise. It is a submerged confluence aimed at reflecting on endangered worlds and shaping things to come through collaborative and sustained site-based inquiry. How Like a Reef is convened by Sonia Levy and Chiara Famengo.

Find out more at @howlikeareef and https://howlikeareef.net/.