Landscapes of elsewhere: on borders, practices and approaches

craft competence center anti-fragile territories

Borders are active, performative constellations engaged in a continuous dialectic: shaping territories while being profoundly shaped by them. The lecture shifts the frame from state-centric instrument to the agency of territory — focusing on geomorphic actants (material traces, ecological morphologies, unbuilt violences) that refract and reconfigure bordering practices.
Abandoning an exclusively anthropocentric lens, the investigation probes how specific landscapes—the desert, the mountain, the marginal ecology—produce material counter-effects. These effects feed back into the very production of frontiers, identities, and institutions. Through three situated territorial inquiries—the North Caucasus frontier between Georgia and Russia; the boundary condition of Georgia–Armenia; and the desert margins of Balochistan at the Iran–Pakistan–Afghanistan nexus—the lecture assembles a compact diorama of methods and design stances. It asks: What forms of instruments, multiscalar readings, and speculative enactments can render visible the latent politics of a place? Can a shared methodological vocabulary be distilled, yet remain grounded in irreducible geopolitical specificity? The talk proposes a practice-oriented reframing of border studies—one that acknowledges the material milieu as co-author. The session will conclude with a collective discussion.

For in-person attendance, registration is required here due to limited capacity by 19/11/2025.

Relatori: Luca Gaeta, Full Professor of Urban Panning at DAStU, Politecnico di Milano.

Speakers: Negar Sanaan Bensi, Assistant Professor at the Architecture Department, TU Delft, Borders & Territories Group; Tinatin Gurgenidze, Co-founder of Tbilisi Architecture Biennial; Salome Katamadze, PhD candidate at UPDP, DAStU, Politecnico di Milano.

Moderated by: Alice Buoli, Assistant Professor of Urban Design at DAStU, Politecnico di Milano.

Responsabili: Salome Katamadze, Luca Gaeta

Contatti: salome.katamadze@polimi.it