Infrastructures and Environment: Lessons from History and Challenges Today

Traditional approaches in the historical field of infrastructures often focus on the achievements of individual masterminds. But if one looks beyond individual pioneers, the emergence of corresponding expert cultures would appear to signal a much more essential and qualitatively significant leap. This remark refers to the groups of military and civil engineers and public planners and administrators, bankers and entrepreneurs, inventors and development engineers, building and civil engineering companies, or politicians on different levels of responsibility. Thus, infrastructures can historically be best understood as the result of processes of negotiation and collective compromise. This setup means that studying the complex relationship between infrastructures and the environment requires finely-tuned interdisciplinary approaches. Leaving out history means losing an essential dimension that can inform us about the potential political, social, and economic risks or other challenges in the planning and realisation of new infrastructures.

Guest Speakers:

Francesco Profumo
President of Fondazione Bruno Kessler – FBK

Nicolas J.A. Buchoud
Fellow, Global Solutions Initiative
President of the Grand Paris Alliance for Sustainable Investments

Helmut Trischler
Director of Deutsches Museum – Rachel Carson Center, Munich

Luigi Crema
Director, Centre Sustainable Energy – SE of Fondazione Bruno Kessler – FBK

Chairs:

Christoph Cornelißen
Director of Istituto storico italo-germanico-FBK, University of Frankfurt a.M.

Giacomo Bonan
Assistant Professor, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Roundtable linked to the LXII STUDY WEEK ENVIRONMENT AND INFRASTRUCTURES FROM THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD TO THE PRESENT: CHALLENGES, KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATION