Programme:
15:00 | Greetings
15:10 | Introduction and exhibition presentation with Federica Fava and Giovanni Caudo
15:40 | Keynote speakers: Alexandre Monnin, Federica Gatta
16:40 | Discussant: Stefano Munarin, Remi Wacogne, Egle Rindzeviciute
17:30 | Conclusive remarks with Giovanni Caudo and Federica Fava
18:00 | Aperitif

Modernist urban settlements originated from utopian ideals, emerging as a response to the post-war need to rebuild European cities in accordance with new ways of life.
More than ever, architecture and urban infrastructure have become symbols of this optimism, promising a prosperity that is all too often betrayed by the extraction of value without limits and, in the last thirty years, by deindustrialisation, economic depression, and pollution. The pervasiveness of these modern ruins thus goes in parallel with the emergence of collective traumas, stigmatisation, disengagement, and a sense of distrust. However, in the current triple crisis—economic, social, and climatic—local participation has become a fundamental component in urban planning to combat inequalities, impoverishment, and to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In this context, heritage-making is a powerful vehicle for community engagement, and a way to counter the technocratic approach that still dominates the planning sector: not only to recognise lesser-known histories but also to rework memories and pains embedded in the territory. Focusing on the relationships between bodies and the land, animating what Latour called the process of returning to the Earth, these processes serve as levers to advance urban and architectural ‘demodernisation’, opening up new perspectives of hope and sharedness.

The panel presents the outcome of two independent, but intertwined research paths developed as part of the project CHANGES – Cultural Heritage Active Innovation for Sustainable Society. The focus is on difficult territories marked by collective traumas: those that emerged around energy infrastructures. These infrastructures are peculiar examples of modernist ambition, producing operational landscapes that make a true Western lifestyle possible. Rural, operational, and inherently challenging, the former Borgo Sabotino Nuclear Power Plant (Latina) and the Nazzano Hydroelectric Plant (Rome) highlight conflicts and wounds that still hurts. Also, they demonstrate how heritage and memory work can be carried out to build other modernities. Recognising or putting in place bottom-up heritage practices thus contributes to a reconciliation strategy for rebuilding awareness, sense of place, and to overcome related fractures and traumas.
The panel aims to explore a holistic and relational approach to territorial regeneration, based on the principles of beauty, inclusivity, and sustainability expressed by the New European Bauhaus (NEB). The research activities indeed demonstrate that a repair project can occur through the involvement of multiple stakeholders and building a urban network based on human capital, shared values and mutual exchange.
However, what is the conceptual framework for this to happen? Certainly, the well-established acceptance of the paradigm of doing with what we have brought into the world and re-signifying its content. On the other side, the centrality of bodies, and thus subjectivities, that insist on the land. Furthermore, the importance of confronting and adapting to the climate crisis is undoubtedly an imperative that cannot be avoided. However, these insights, profiles, and challenges do not exhaust the scene.
We face the need to examine our design practice more consciously, situating it within the multiple relationship between us and things, as well as the environment.
It follows that a relational approach to urban planning is the premise for supporting a transition towards co-evolutive possibilities. This transition is oriented not only toward a general call for hope but also toward a re-education that enables continued thriving. The aspiration of the panel, therefore, is to explore three trajectories of thought: heritage-making in relation to difficult sites; reconciliation from an anthropological point of view; and the disciplinary perspectives of urban planning and architecture, in order to open them up to life-oriented policies. Relational urban planning is thus proposed as a trajectory capable of holding together culture, environmental sustainability and spatial justice towards urban health and incremental hope.

The panel is part of Incremental hope. Witnesses of a shared future, a video installation curated by Giovanni Caudo and Federica Fava as part of the exhibition Utopia and Reality: Challenges in Applying New European Bauhaus (NEB) Values in Modernist Districts on the example of Tallinn, Aarhus and Rome. This latter is a joint initiative, curated by the Architecture departments of TalTech & Rome Tre University, Tallinn and Aarhus City governments, and included in the exhibition Time Space Existence 2025, held at Palazzo Mora, Venice, 10th May/23rd November 2025.
Incremental hope is a contribution to the New European Bauhaus movement — a call to reimagine our future by weaving beauty, sustainability, and inclusion into the spaces we inhabit. Through projects and territories, it explores a progressive and openly imperfect approach to urban regeneration, one that trusts uncertainty as a space for growth and creativity.
At the heart of this journey is heritage — not as a static legacy, but as a living, open process co-created by communities, made of relationships, care, and collective memory. This relational dimension is what truly transforms places and practices, and it is the foundation upon which a new cultural paradigm can evolve. Over the 6 months of the exhibition, the installation evolves to become a platform for dialoguing with difficult yet still dream-like realities.
The panel is therefore also an opportunity to update the video installation and to present and discuss the results of research conducted on the two mentioned case studies.

BIO:
Alexandre Monnin is a philosopher and researcher who holds a PhD from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. He co-initiated the philosophy of the Web movement before co-initiating the ecological redirection one. As scientific director of POPSU Transition de la métropole Nice Côte d’Azur, he is currently leading a project supported by the Imaginarium-S association (bringing together several co-financing partners, notably the Institut pour la Recherche de la Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations) about territorial ecological redirection. He is the author of several books, including Héritage et fermeture. Une écologie du démantèlement (Editions Divergences, 2021, with Emmanuel Bonnet and Diego Landivar) and, alone, Politiser le renoncement (Editions Divergences, 2023).

Federica Gatta is senior lecturer in urban planning at the University of Grenoble Alpes and researcher at the PACTE laboratory of social sciences. Her work focuses on the anthropological analysis of spatial transformation. Her research explores situations of negotiation and collaboration between institutions and civil society, examining the role of space in social critique. She is currently coordinating the international research project “Commoning processes in Austerity urbanism: spatial REgeneration and governance”.