The lecturer from UIC Barcelona School of Architecture Lorenzo Chelleri travelled to Turin (Italy) to take part in an international conference on 17 and 18 February. The conference was organised with a view to furthering the discussion on new transdisciplinary tools and educational paradigms that will help incorporate the urban sustainability goals into university teaching models, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals that form part of the United Nations’ New Urban Agenda 2030.

A total of 25 European experts attended the meeting, which was set up by the Politecnico di Torino’s TrUST (Transdisciplinary for Urban Sustainability Transition) project, together with the SHAPE-ID (Shaping Interdisciplinary Practices in Europe) project. The latter has been funded by the European Union and aims to improve inter- and transdisciplinary cooperation among the arts, humanities, sciences and social sciences in order to address this century’s challenges, such as the new sustainable urban model. 

“In an age of global urbanisation, the current climate and environmental crisis and a clear breakdown of our society, multilateral agencies are calling for a shift to urban models that are based on resilience and sustainability. Regrettably, universities are falling behind due to out-dated educational models that are divided up into separate disciplines. We must approach the question of sustainability with a more interdisciplinary mindset, and we have used this meeting to explore appropriate solutions”, explains Lorenzo Chelleri. 

Following the debate, the experts attended a writing workshop with the aim of producing a collaborative report on the state of play across Europe, as well as the new paradigms and tools universities should begin to implement in order to move towards a more interdisciplinary educational model. 

Since the 2018-2019 academic year, lecturer Lorenzo Chelleri has been the director of the Master’s Degree in City Resilience Design and Management, an interdisciplinary programme in which multilateral agencies, activists, specialists from local government and foundations share a teaching space with professors and experts from a variety of disciplines. “Thanks to this programme and the University Master’s Degree in International Cooperation: Sustainable Emergency Architecture, I think that UIC Barcelona School of Architecture is quickly on its way to offering some of Europe’s most innovative educational models”, concludes the lecturer.