Barbara Coppetti
Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design
Politecnico di Milano
Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU)
Barbara Coppetti is an associate professor of Architectural and Urban Design at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Politecnico di Milano. She teaches Architectural Design at the Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering (AUIC) School.
Her research is focused on the field of Architectural and Urban Composition, wherein she explores the themes of regeneration in critical contexts, analysing it from a multidisciplinary perspective encompassing the social, physical, and spatial dimensions. In the context of abandonment and underutilisation, her research emphasizes the necessity for activating practices and projects to care for public spaces and foster social interaction. Her commitment lies in exploring design strategies that can reconstruct relationships between people and the forms of existing and natural presences. Through the design, the objective is to update the identity and recognisability of places to enhance public heritage.
Since 2021, she is the Scientific responsible for the regeneration project of the inner edge of Lambro Inferiore, with the exploration of adaptive reuse scenarios of public areas and the arches under the railway embankment of Viale Cassala, Milan. Since 2017, she has been also developing research related to learning spaces. Between 2021 and 2023, she coordinated Inventing Schools. A school as big as the world, the educational experimentation platform – part of the New European Bauhaus- dedicated to the topic of state school, promoted by the AUIC School and the Municipality of Milan. She was the Scientific responsible for the DAStU for the research project A Shared School: for a Culture of Happiness (2019/2021), a project funding by the Social Enterprise with Children within the Ministerial Fund for the fight against Child Educational Poverty. She collaborated in the research project Let’s design the School together (2017), an initiative promoted by AIDIA – Italian Association of Women Engineers and Architects.
Prominent research projects include Ri-formare Milano. Projects for abandoned and neglected areas and buildings (2013/2017), an experiment aimed at addressing the phenomena of degradation and abandonment of areas and buildings, exploring issues related to the regeneration of the existing, the recovery and reuse of heritage. She participated in several PRIN, including RE-CYCLE Italy. New life cycles for architecture and infrastructures of the city and landscape (2013/2016), and Transformation, regeneration, architectural, urban, environmental enhancement of marginal housing fabrics. Methods, tools, projects applied to the western sector of Milan (PRIN-MIUR 2008).
She curated several exhibitions, seminars and public meetings; she participates in international and national conferences to foster dissemination, exchange and comparison in scientific research. She carries out design activities in international design competitions and thematic calls.
