Tracks

TRACK 1 - Cura Technica_The Healing Interface 

Technological interfaces are no longer auxiliary to architectural and urban practice: they are reshaping how the built environment is conceived, analyzed, built, managed and inhabited. Artificial intelligence, parametric design, digital twins, immersive environments, spatial data platforms and machine learning are not merely accelerating existing methods, they are opening questions about the nature of knowledge, authorship and responsibility in spatial disciplines. By considering technology as a broad ecosystem of tools, systems, materials, and practices, the track explores its capacity to foster integration across design, engineering, construction, conservation, governance, and everyday life. 

Technologies for knowledge and representation  

Digitalization has transformed the way we know and document the built and natural environment. From photogrammetric survey to laser scanning, from BIM to geographic information systems, the tools available for recording, analyzing and communicating spatial knowledge have multiplied in range and precision. This track welcomes contributions that reflect critically on these technologies, not only their technical capacities but their epistemological, cultural and social implications. What do different technological lenses allow us to see? What remains invisible?  

Particular attention will be given to contributions addressing the relationship between technology and cultural heritage, exploring how digital documentation, 3D reconstruction, extended reality (XR), advanced conservation techniques, material diagnostics, monitoring systems, and territorial knowledge platforms can support the preservation, interpretation, accessibility, and long-term stewardship of heritage assets. 

AI, automation, and design practice 

Generative AI, large language models, parametric systems, and machine learning are becoming active participants in design and decision‑making. This strand explores how these systems reshape creativity, authorship, responsibility, and the framing of design problems. We welcome critical investigations that treat AI as an epistemological actor, rather than a neutral tool. Submissions may examine generative design workflows, algorithmic and parametric approaches, city digital twins as governance instruments, or AI in simulation and scenario planning. Across contributions, the central question is: whose interests do these algorithms serve, and who is excluded? 

Energy transition, environmental governance, and technology transfer 

Digital technologies are increasingly central to the governance of energy systems and management of the built environment at multiple scales, from building energy performance to district-level metabolic monitoring. This strand welcomes research and projects that explore how digital strategies can support the transition to energy-efficient, climate-resilient and ecologically responsible environments. 

Topics include monitoring and control systems, integrated operation and maintenance strategies, environmental technologies, circular resource management, and systemic approaches that connect design, construction, and governance. We also encourage work addressing the institutional, political, economic, and organizational conditions that enable or inhibit technology adoption, with an emphasis on pathways for transferring research into professional practice and public administration. 

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Track keywords: digital surveying, city digital twin, generative AI, technology transfer, space syntax analysis, circular resource management, XR, GIS, machine learning, BIM, parametric design, energy transition, data-driven urbanism 

TRACK 2 - Cura Memoriae_Tending What Remains 

Heritage is not a static deposit to be preserved in isolation. It is a living field that demands continuous acts of care, reinterpretation and reactivation. This track explores the convergence of conservation, community, narrative and technology in keeping memory productive. It asks how heritage can become a resource for future-making rather than a boundary around the past. And it insists that heritage practices are never neutral: they encode values, reproduce hierarchies, and include or exclude.  

Historical-critical analysis and the ethics of conservation 

The discourse of conservation has evolved substantially since Ruskin identified the building as a document of civilisation irreplaceable in any facsimile. This track welcomes contributions that examine the theoretical and methodological foundations of conservation. 

Particular attention will be given to contributions that address vernacular buildings and vernacular knowledge: the architectures of ordinary life that are rarely protected by formal heritage instruments but that carry dense cultural identity and ecological intelligence. How do we tend to what has never been officially recognised as worthy of tending? 

Post-war architecture and the politics of memory 

The built heritage of the twentieth century presents distinctive challenges. Post-war architecture, now frequently in physical and institutional decay, poses questions about how we evaluate significance, manage transformation and negotiate between preservation and adaptation. This track invites contributions that examine specific cases of post-war heritage in Europe, exploring the historiographic, political and design dimensions of their conservation or transformation. 

Atlases, mappings and comparative surveys of heritage at risk offer methodological models for addressing these questions at scale. Contributions that develop or critically evaluate such instruments, whether in print or digital form, are especially welcome. 

Gender planning, spatial equity and the right to inhabit 

Heritage and memory are not only about buildings. They are about whom has inhabited space. The gender dimensions of the built environment, from the design of domestic space to the governance of public space, constitute a critical lens for heritage practice. 

This track welcomes contributions that bring together gender-sensitive planning, sociospatial analysis and heritage research: exploring how policies and practices for urban and territorial transformation can address the legacies of exclusion encoded in the built environment. From participatory planning approaches in historic centres to the regeneration of marginal and rural areas, the question of who benefits from heritage investment must be held centrally. Contributions engaging with intersectional justice, walkability and the everyday experience of public space are especially encouraged. 

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Track keywords: cultural identity, vernacular buildings, conservation, post-war architecture, archival research, historical-critical analysis, memory, Ruskin, museology, atlases, gender planning, spatial equity, gender-sensitive planning, territorial development, walkability, historic centres, public spaces, rural areas. 

TRACK 3 - Cura Vitae_Space That Heals 

This track treats wellbeing not as a niche concern, but as the ground of spatial practice: the condition that every act of design either supports or undermines. From the quality of light to the availability of green space in a dense urban neighbourhood, from the acoustics of a school to the thermal resilience of a city under climate stress: every spatial decision is a decision about health. 

The relationship between space, body and health: an interdisciplinary perspective 

Neuroarchitecture, environmental psychology, perceptual analysis and sensory urbanism have opened new paths for understanding how the built environment acts on humans. This strand aims to reframe comfort as an embodied, affective phenomenon and to stimulate interdisciplinary research and design that place human well‑being at the core of environmental and architectural decision‑making. We invite proposals that: investigate multisensory and embodied dimensions of comfort using mixed methods (physiological measures, self‑report, behavioural observation, perceptual analysis); explore how spatial design and IEQ influence performance, satisfaction, and health across contexts (e.g., offices, hospitals, schools, public spaces); critically assess the effectiveness of certifications and standards in capturing experiential and affective aspects of well‑being; propose design or operational strategies that integrate emotional and cognitive needs with functional requirements to promote well-being; present interdisciplinary frameworks or research programs that bridge neuroscience, psychology, and architectural practice to generate testable hypotheses and actionable guidance. 

Climate adaptation and mitigation strategies at urban and regional level 

The climate crisis is a health crisis. Heat stress, air quality, flooding, the erosion of biodiversity and the degradation of urban microclimates are not abstract environmental problems. They are lived conditions that affect bodies differentially, with the greatest burden falling on those already most vulnerable. Architecture and urban planning have a central role to play in climate adaptation and mitigation: from the design of thermally resilient buildings to the restructuring of urban morphology in ways that moderate temperature, manage water and support ecological function. 

This track invites contributions that examine climate design strategies at multiple scales, not with the goal of technical optimisation alone, but the design of environments where adaptation and wellbeing are genuinely inseparable. 

The project as a tool for reconnecting the natural and built environments 

The reintroduction of ecological processes, living systems and natural cycles into built and degraded environments is possibly one of the most promising design frontiers of our time. This track welcomes contributions that explore specific projects or methodologies through which architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning are working to restore a productive dialogue between the natural and the heavily man-made: blue-green infrastructure, urban forestry, ecological corridors, regenerative landscapes, climate adaptation parks.Contributions that reflect on the governance, participation and policy dimensions of such projects, as well as their formal and spatial dimensions, are especially valued. 

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Track keywords: urban health, comfort and wellbeing, hospital spaces, thermal resilience, urban lighting, perceptual analysis, neuroarchitecture, healing spaces, climate adaptation, urban microclimates, climate design, zero net land take, Nature-Based Solutions, hydrogeological balance, biophilic design.