Scientific infrastructure and landscape. First developments of the "Laboratory of Architecture and Territory” of the ETIC project

This paper illustrates the first search results of a complex and ambitious initiative named Einstein Telescope Infrastructure Consortium, which is part of Mission 4 of the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan), coordinated by the Italian MUR (Ministry of University and Research). ETIC’s objective is to support the Italian candidacy to host the latest generation gravitational interferometer in Sardinia (Lula, NU). This scientific project is of major and strategic interest for Europe as well as for the local territory turned into a privileged site for the contamination of knowledge, where innovation run in parallel with a model of inclusive society. The Laboratory of Architecture and Territory—whose members are all architects and researchers from the Department of Civil, Environmental Engineering and Architecture of the University of Cagliari—investigates the relational dimension inherent with the science-research-territory triad through a rigorous methodology, based on analytical readings of the context, and resulting in a set of design strategies and interventions. The main topics developed so far, which are also the focus of this paper, are fundamental to describe a state of the art and to explore a critical approach structured on three thematic focuses: relationship between innovation and historical cultural heritage; landscape as a stratified palimpsest; the research campus as a design-cultural model to interpret scientific infrastructures in their hybrid and renewed iterations.