Policies and Architectures for the Unthinkable Era: New Resilient Landscapes in Fragile Areas of Sardinia

The culture of urban space design is not separate from the uncanny nature of climate change, even though this latter now appears more threatening than the production of risks or new vulnerabilities. Environmental disasters and cities’ high degree of exposure to these risks are well known. What is apparent is the close relationship between these disasters and the urban transformations generated by approaches which, quoting the writer Amitav Gohsh, can be defined as outcomes of the Great Derangement Era. Through our research and design project; we have outlined the need to break free from the uncanny feeling caused by the specific phenomena which make territories more fragile and vulnerable to extreme weather and climate events. The design process illustrated, which involved a small town in central-western Sardinia, is an example of how the construction of a new urban landscape and architecture can take place starting, not only from the contingent risks of emergency situations, but rather from the recognition of any potential risks. With the goal of setting up an open and sustainable territorial plan, the case study has been designed as an approach to climate adaptation even if in Sardinia the link between climate change and flood risk has not been studied in depth and no evidence of this link has yet emerged. The project scenarios of an urban plan for one of the local governments in Sardinia, highlighted in the paper, has been conceived as a path of coevolution between new urban transformations and ecological dynamics of the environment.