“Roma Tre University: La Fabbrica della Conoscenza e della Sostenibilità Urbana” presented by Panizza

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Presentation Title:
  • Roma Tre University: La Fabbrica della Conoscenza e della Sostenibilità Urbana

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Abstract:

  • The “knowledge factory” is a dear metaphor in Rome Tre. Since its founding, the University has been proposed as a constituent part of the social fabric in which it is part and its commitment has focused, through the recovery and reconversion of existing buildings, on the planning of the territory and the upgrading of areas destined for degradation. Through a constantly evolving project, always attentive to the needs of the context, our property has been enriched with buildings once destined for other purposes: little “university” silhouettes that, despite functional adaptation, have transformed them into new plants still keeping their “personality”. Here is the idea of the “knowledge factory”: a project that, in the full recovery of historical memory, is capable of transforming the territory through modern structures; A metaphor useful, therefore, to represent the transition to the formation of dense areas of cultural activities. The unifying idea of this path is surely the Terza Missione, whose reference activities relate to the transfer of knowledge and social commitment. Hence also the adoption of a cultural paradigm that is recognized in a concept of great relevance that is sustainability. This involves at least three interdependent dimensions: environmental protection, social improvement, and economic development.

    But what is meant by the term “sustainable” if this is applied to the academic environment? From its synonyms emerge, on the one hand, the concepts of “acceptable” and “bearable”, on the other, “durable” and “feasible”, which project attention to the effect of the actions carried out but leave in shadow the Component of the subjective commitment. For this reason, I prefer to replace the terms “sustainable” and “sustainability” with the terms “responsible” and “responsibility” as they are more suitable to represent the initiatives that together with teaching and research measure the quality of a university, faculty to train students and to interact with all the realities, social, institutional, territorial, with whom he has relationships.

    Taking the term responsibility means recognizing explicit academic implications in the academic world. The University is committed to integrating them into all its institutional and non-institutional (education, research, governance, etc.) concepts, and to disseminate its values, targeting goals become a priority precisely because framed within a shared strategy, backed by voluntary behavior, chosen as a lifestyle. Already oriented to the nature of their mission to responsibility, academic institutions are called upon to act in substantial terms to educate and accustom their students not only to confront different languages and scientific fields, but also to develop that sensitivity that A rapidly changing society like ours, imposes.

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