CODE 95274 ACADEMIC YEAR 2025/2026 CREDITS 4 cfu anno 1 ARCHITECTURAL COMPOSITION 11930 (LM-4 R) - GENOVA 4 cfu anno 1 ARCHITETTURA 11913 (LM-4 R) - GENOVA 4 cfu anno 2 ARCHITETTURA 9915 (LM-4) - GENOVA 4 cfu anno 2 ARCHITECTURAL COMPOSITION 11120 (LM-4) - GENOVA SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINARY SECTOR ICAR/14 LANGUAGE English TEACHING LOCATION GENOVA SEMESTER 2° Semester TEACHING MATERIALS AULAWEB OVERVIEW OFFSHORE. Architecture Beyond Land The ocean is no longer a vast void, but a spatial frontier shaped by environmental, economic, and political forces. Offshore examines how oceans have become urbanised hinterlands—once fluid and networked, now increasingly territorialised through Exclusive Economic Zones and Marine Spatial Planning. This shift introduces a fundamental tension: between the open nature of ocean systems and the static logic of land-based design. Lacking human settlement, offshore spaces are typically defined by specialised functions—energy production, logistics, conservation—rendering them remote, and mono-functional. Their detachment from embodied interaction fosters abstraction, technocracy, and a loss of spatial imagination. This course questions how architecture can intervene in this context—not to colonise, but to reframe oceanic space as a site of design agency, beyond extractivism and control, and toward a renewed understanding of planetary urbanism. AIMS AND CONTENT LEARNING OUTCOMES The course will develop in the students a broad design ability to address coastal and port city topics, as well as environmental issues in an integrated matter with issues of public space through an urban/architectural proposal that can adapt to changing conditions. The students will develop the ability to think and work logically and sequentially to develop a hierarchical strategy (from schematic to developed, from permanent structure to, eventually, ephemeral elements and over a range of time. The students will develop the ability to work in a multicultural and interdisciplinary team to learn to communicate and collaborate within a design team, integrating the knowledge and viewpoints of others from other fields of expertise. They will be able to build up an extensive body of literature and project references on the subject of coastal areas and port cities. The language of instruction is English, so the improvement of communication skills in English and developing a disciplinary vocabulary will be stressed. AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES After the previous courses “Port-City Architectures. Inclusive and Hybrid Approaches for Land-Sea Settlements” (a.y. 2022/2023), “Solid Water. Port Dams as Land-Sea Architectures and Settlements” (a.y. 2023/2024) and “Operative Machines. The Port Grammar”, the course "Offshore. Architecture Beyond Land" takes as its case studies a selection of offshore architectures found in seas and oceans all over the world. Even before tackling them with design action, the course aims to represent them as architectures and to catalogue them as components of a collective and comprehensive grammar. The course "Offshore. Architecture Beyond Land" main goals are: - dealing with urban/architectural design in an inhabited/developed coastal context; - confronting the relationship between the built environment and the sea; - addressing coastal environmental issues, as well as issues of adaptability over time; - tackling climate change, aspects of temporariness, seasonality and impermanence of marine settlements and social/cultural living patterns. Upon completion of the course the student will be able to: - develop a decision-making design process based on forming options and making justifiable choices; - develop design proposals that permit and encourage adaptation and transformation with contextual changes (human, climatic, etc.); - develop different scenarios for completing the schematic architecture over short and long periods of time, with degrees of the permanent, temporary and ephemeral; - build up an extensive body of literature and project references on the subject of coastal areas and port cities; - learn new ways to work with modeling software and minimal rendering; - communicate more effectively in spoken English. PREREQUISITES The student is required to have: - basic knowledge or sense of architecture in an urban environment; - basic knowledge about the condition of coastal areas and port cities; - good ability with modeling software (Sketchup); - strong ability in Autocad or VectorWorks; - strong ability with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Indesign; - skill and interest in the realisation of physical models; - previous understanding of design and environmental issues is useful; - capacity to communicate and interest in improving presentation skills in spoken English. TEACHING METHODS The course will be based on three Exercises – “Drawing”, “Series”, “Vision”. Each student will select a specific offshore architecture in a sea or ocean context. The selected architecture should be in a contemporary context (i.e., still present and in use, not in construction and not a vision). The overall work of the exercises will consist of analysing the architecture and the context in which it is set, its spatial and volumetric configurations, its technical dimensions, the particular technologies, materials or devices integrated into the operative component. Each student will have to set up a design work according to three connected steps/exercises. Each step/exercise will correspond to an A4-eighth (aka “ottavino”), vertically oriented, for a total of 3 eighths (24 pages in total). In parallel to the exercises, students will produce physical Models (scale TBD). This work will have to communicate the features of the operative machines studied, paying particular attention to architectural components, structural layout and cladding, as well as its position in relation to the context. The models should be conceptual and synthetic and represent, as a whole, the vast sample of port grammar in offshore conditions. Drawing Representation of the selected offshore architecture by means of architectural drawings. Each student must draw up one A4-eighth (“ottavino”) in which the selected operative machine is shown in orthogonal projection with plan(s), elevation(s) and section(s). Series Construction of an iconographic series, a repertoire of images differing in scale, function and era that narrate an imagery of collective inspiration for the selected offshore architecture. Inspired by the photographic work of the German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher and their series of photographic images, each student will have to draw up one A4-eighth (“ottavino”) by selecting at least 30 images, according to a principle of analogical juxtaposition of shapes, volumes, proportions and colours in relation to the selected operative machine. Vision Graphic elaboration of an axonometric or perspective view exemplifying a possible design intervention on the selected offshore architecture. Each student will have to draft one A4-eighth (“ottavino”) and suggest an architectural project by making plastic and morphological additions, demolitions, replacements of volumes, etc. Starting with the formal, compositional and structural characteristics of the offshore architecture under study, projects will perform a functional hybridization between the purely operational activity (i.e., the pre-existent one) and one urban functions, that allows the presence of human or non-human communities. Projects will either take the form of individual architectures or larger settlements, expressing the phenomena of differentiation, plurality and imbalance requirements of the land-sea border. A major goal will be to elaborate a distinct new architectural-infrastructural device. Particular attention will be devoted to the definition of development phases in which the designed architecture and its context evolve and are able to be transformed to meet the new conditions and uses. --- Students who have a valid certification of physical or learning disabilities on file with the University and who wish to discuss possible accommodations or other circumstances regarding lectures, coursework and exams, should speak both with the teacher and with the Department Architecture and Design's disability referent (https://architettura.unige.it/commissioni_e_referenti_dipartimento). SYLLABUS/CONTENT What is architecture when the ground disappears? Is it possible to unlearn architecture’s dependence on land, gravity, and stability? How can we reimagine offshore zones as sites of care rather than conquest? Can marine infrastructures be reused, reinhabited, or dismantled—architecturally? How does offshore architecture shift our understanding of scale, time, and composition? This course challenges students to explore architecture beyond the traditional confines of land-based thinking. In a world of rising sea levels, intensifying extractive economies, and expanding logistical infrastructures, the ocean is no longer a remote backdrop—it is a spatial frontier, an operational field, and a contested terrain. Offshore investigates how architecture can engage this vast, fluid, and often invisible realm—not to colonize it, but to critically reinterpret its role in the built environment. The studio examines offshore territories—ports, platforms, logistical zones, dredged landscapes, artificial islands, and marine infrastructures—as spaces of architectural potential. These environments are typically hyper-functional, inaccessible, and politically charged, yet they raise urgent questions about scale, sovereignty, inhabitation, and climate resilience. We will treat them not as neutral technical zones, but as cultural and spatial artifacts open to reinterpretation. Key topics will include: Architecture at the edge of land and sea: thresholds, transitions, and new forms of urbanization Offshore infrastructures as spaces of political, environmental, and spatial complexity Marine spatial planning and the territorialization of the ocean Architectural composition in post-terrestrial contexts Adaptive reuse and disassembly as strategies in floating, amphibious, or coastal systems New imaginaries of dwelling, repair, and non-extractive futures beyond land Through site-specific research, drawing, modelling, and speculative design, students will develop proposals that question dominant narratives of growth and production. The course “Offshore. Architecture Beyond Land” calls for new compositional strategies capable of navigating instability—of working not only with form, but also with movement, time, and environmental forces. It invites architecture to venture where it rarely does: into spaces that are unsettled, fluid, and in need of new forms of care, governance, and imagination. Especially between the 19th and 20th centuries, ports underwent comparable phases of development, characterized by the impressive expansion of their territory and the gradual obsolescence and decommissioning of the oldest maritime centres. More recently, global phenomena (such as, the unification and automation of cargo, naval gigantism, intermodal traffic, the ports regionalization and the rise of port systems or clusters) have forced ports to provide themselves with the same equipment to meet operational needs such as loading and unloading ships, storage, handling and control of goods, distribution and, in some cases, processing of semi-finished products. This proliferation of recurrent forms and devices at the service of mechanization, standardization and, ultimately, of the rules of logistics is the origin of collective characteristics: a special morphology of landscapes and utilitarian architectures that recurs in ports even at very distant latitudes. Sometimes inherent to the formal aspect of the architecture or, on the other hand, to the industrial function or the construction or material choices, the features of the port architectural typology have ancient roots that manifest themselves through analogies that distinguish them and, at the same time, unite them. Every port possesses a list of similar elements that, combined with the urban syntax, make it a place that is both peculiar and generic. On a theoretical basis, the course aims to study, catalogue and intervene with the tools of architectural design on a selected sample of offshore architectures. The founding theoretical principle of the course is to recognize an architectural quality in artefacts designed and used mainly for infrastructural purposes. Oil and gas platforms, wind farms, wave and tidal energy installations, subsea pipelines and cables but also sea forts, radar and surveillance stations, anchorages and marine highways, offshore ports and deep-sea terminals, oceanographic research stations, underwater habitats, artificial reefs, floating wetlands, and amphibious housing prototypes or luxury houseboats and private islands, to name just a few, are all components that contribute to the shaping of sea and ocean spatiality and offer themselves as active constituents of the heritage and design of the contemporary marine landscape. They are extreme forms of settlement and territorial morphologies. The remarkable engineering efforts for settling these offshore architectures appear as attempts to solidify and crystallize the restless fluidity of water, thus making the process of design completely focused on the need to replicate the ground of the land onto the water surface. Furthermore, this fluid condition affects not only the aesthetics of their architecture, but also the politics of the space, as highlighted by concepts as viscosity and blankness, as extraterritoriality and illegality. The relationships between public and private space; the role of technology in shaping the accessibility of space and the constant relationship with the land urbanism are some of the topics that interest architectural design within this spatial context. RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY [selection] BOOKS/ESSAYS Allen S., 1999, “Infrastructural urbanism” in Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, pp. 46–59. Andriani C., 2020, “Oltre. Metabolisms at the City/Port Border”, in Moretti (2020: 14-19). Andriani, C., Moretti, B., Servente, D., 2018, “Patrimonio di confine tra Città e Porto. Il caso di Genova” in Paesaggio Urbano. Paesaggio Urbano, 3, 29-39. Banham R., 1989, A Concrete Atlantis. U.S. Industrial Building and European Modern Architecture, The MIT Press. Brenner N., Katsikis N., 2018, “Operational landscapes: Hinterlands of the capitalocene” in AD Architectural Design, 90, 1: 22-31. Brenner N., 2013, Implosions /Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization, Berlin, Boston: JOVIS Verlag GmbH. Bruttomesso R., Alemany J., 2011, eds., The Port City of the XXIst Century: New Challenges in the Relationship between Port and City. Venezia: RETE Publisher. Couling N., Hein C., 2020, (eds.), The Urbanisation of the Sea. From Concepts and Analysis to Design. nai010 publishers, Rotterdam. Couling N. 2015, The Role of Ocean Space in Contemporary Urbanization (Doctoral Thesis), EPFL Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne. De Carlo G., 1992, La Città e il Porto. Torino: Marietti. Ducruet C., 2011, “The Port City in Multidisciplinary Analysis”, in Bruttomesso, Alemany (2011: 32-48). Hein C., 2011, eds., Port Cities: Dynamic Landscapes and Global Networks. Abingdon-New York, NY: Routledge. Hein C., 2020, “Designing Thresholds in the Port Cityscapes”, in Moretti (2020: 200-205). Hein C., van Mi Y.l, Azman-Momirski L., 2023, Port City Atlas. Mapping European Port City Territories: From Understanding to Design, nai010 publishers, Rotterdam. Khosravi H., Bacchin T.K., LaFleur F. (2019), Aesthetics and Politics of Logistics. Humboldt Books, Venice and Rotterdam. Moretti, B., 2022. “Architetture della Città Portuale Contemporanea. Composizioni Ibride ed Eccezionali Contesti” in GUD, Composizioni – Compositions, n. 6, 24-33, Stefano Termanini Editore, Genova. Moretti, B., 2021, “La grammatica dei porti, una morfologia speciale di paesaggi analoghi. Il caso del Grain Elevator di Buffalo” in GUD, Analogia – Analogy, n. 3, 46-55. Moretti B., 2020, Beyond the Port City: The Condition of Portuality and the Threshold Concept. Berlin: Jovis. Moretti B., 2020, “The FRAC of Dunkirk by Lacaton & Vassal: About Incommensurability, Duplication and Openness” in WA – World Architecture Magazine, 356, 114-119 Moretti, B., Komossa, S., Marzot, N., Andriani, C., 2019, “States of co-existence and border projects in port cities: Genoa and Rotterdam compared” in Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Urban Design and Planning, 172(5), 191-202. Nesbit J. S., 2024. Ground Control. A Design History of Technical Lands and NASA’s Space Complex. Routledge, New York. Nesbit J. S., Waldheim C., 2022, (eds.). Technical Lands: A Critical Primer, JOVIS Verlag GmbH, Berlin. Pavia R., Di Venosa M., 2012, Waterfront: Dal conflitto all’integrazione. Trento: LISt Lab. Rosselli A., 2005, “Il porto come struttura e significato” in Portus, 10: 4-9. Unwin S., 2007, Doorway. Abingdon-New York, NY: Routledge. Tschumi B., 1981, The Manhattan Transcripts. Academy Editions, London. Vianello M. 2022, Returns to Seaspace. Architectural and Urban Approaches to Marine Environments (Doctoral Thesis). Università IUAV di Venezia. Young L., 2019, Machine Landscapes: Architectures of the Post-Anthropocene. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc. WEBSITES PULSE - Port-clUster LandScapE: Developing a Spatial and Design Approach to Port Clusters EU Funded Project, Next Generation EU, NNRP, Young Researchers Public Notice 2022 https://pulse.unige.it TRANSITIONAL TERRITORIES, TU Delft, NL https://transitionalterritories.org/ DELTA URBANISM, TU Delft, NL https://deltaurbanism.org/ PORTCITY FUTURES Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities, NL https://www.portcityfutures.nl/home BORDERS&TERRITORIES, NL https://www.borders-territories.space PORTUS, the online magazine of RETE, Venice, IT https://portusonline.org/ OSSERVATORIO DEI PAESAGGI COSTIERI ITALIANI https://www.paesaggicostieri.org/ SEASCAPE. International Journal of Architecture, Urbanism and Geomorphology of Coastal Landscapes https://seascape.it/ North Sea Wind Park, MVRDV, 2006 https://www.mvrdv.nl/projects/98/north-sea-wind-park DELTA WORKS, NL https://www.zeeuwseankers.nl/en/story/deltawerken-safety-and-recreation TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD BEATRICE MORETTI Ricevimento: By appointment, by writing to beatrice.moretti@unige.it LESSONS LESSONS START According to the academic calendar. Class schedule The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy EXAMS EXAM DESCRIPTION At the end of the semester, students will present and discuss with critics their design rationale and justification for the project based on the course objectives. The work presented for the final examination will be the series of 3 A4-eights ("ottavinos") and the physical model on an architectural scale (TBD). A digital pdf version of the 3 A4-eights will also be submitted and discussed during the exam. A template of the layout, in Indesign format (.indd), will be provided for graphics processing. Aspects to be emphasized in the final evaluation are: research, references, case studies, use of information; interpretative approach developed for the study and design of the selected operative machine; typological and functional design action the architecture of permanence and change; urban strategy, insertion of the designed architecture into the context, design of public spaces and connections; environmental conditions and integrated architectural response; collaboration and communication; visualization of the project and effective use of media; effectiveness of the work and final presentation. ASSESSMENT METHODS Assessment and evaluation will take place at the end of each phase of work, by both the professor and the group/class itself. The presence of external guests during the final exam, as jury, will offer a direct and qualified confrontation in which the student will have to demonstrate the critical-theoretical and strategic-planning skills acquired during the course. The final examination, conducted in presence and in oral form by all students, will verify the level of learning of the primary notions of architectural design and the themes proposed by the course.
