The concept of heritage has gradually expanded and become more layered over time, encompassing not only tangible and intangible aspects, but also configuring it as a cultural and collective process (Harvey, 2001), shaped by social practices, shared imaginaries, and everyday uses (Smith, 2006; Harrison, 2023).
In accordance with the outlined perspective by ICOMOS (2011), heritage is understood as a dynamic stratification of values in continuous transformation, requiring critical and reflective approaches (Harrison, 2023; Lixinski et al., 2024).
The challenges at the heart of EU policies – climate change, socioeconomic crisis, loss of biodiversity, and the collapse of entire urban and rural ecosystems – require innovative and informed methodologies and tools capable of integrating technology and design culture in order to overcome the limitations of purely conservative approaches, disorganic regeneration, and interventions that are alien to local identities (Harrison, 2023). At the same time, different disciplinary contributions can converge in providing answers to emerging issues concerning the relationship between heritage and innovation, in new forms of widespread, dynamic, and evolving heritage, which include architectural, environmental, and naturalistic components, but also landscape, community, and relational aspects (UNESCO, 2003), as well as cultural rights, participatory dimensions, and community practices.
This implies reflecting not only on how to physically regenerate this heritage, but also on its capacity to generate social cohesion, protect biodiversity, and reactivate relationships through plural, cyclical, decentralized, or climate-influenced temporalities (Lixinski et al., 2024; Lahdesmaki, 2025).
The aim of the call is to use knowledge and design approaches and methodologies to bring out those values – identity, cultural, ethical, environmental – that can define the areas of intervention in order to outline appropriate forms of heritage protection or enhancement, also in light of serious critical issues such as those related to lack of maintenance, abandonment, or improper use resulting from uncontrolled transformations that are detached from the contexts in which they occur.
In this scenario, TECHNE 32 aims to collect theoretical, research, and design experimentation contributions, both completed and ongoing, that critically illustrate processes of regeneration, reactivation, enhancement, adaptive reuse, and repurposing of heritage in relation to climatic, environmental, social, and cultural transitions. The fields of investigation and in-depth study particularly encourage contributions that address the relationship between design and heritage, considering the complexity of the topic, which requires appropriate value boundaries in the convergence of multiple cultural and scientific skills, as well as interdisciplinary and forward-looking approaches with regard to one of the following topics.
1. Local heritage: cities, margins, and communities
Contributions on project innovation in the context of regenerative processes of territorial and urban heritage with a focus on the most fragile contexts (historic centers and villages, suburbs, urban edge areas, degraded environmental/naturalistic contexts and systems, etc.). For example, are required:
- strategies and design experiments for reactivation;
- practices of environmental refunctionalization and regeneration;
- participatory experiences of strategies and projects for the reactivation of communities, sociality, and the identity of places.
Contributions on cultural, productive, and social innovation that highlight technological solutions for regeneration and social inclusion processes, in which the transformative project takes on the role of enabling infrastructure in connecting cultural and creative industries, contemporary crafts and manufacturing, local knowledge and circular economy networks, strategies for restoring urban biodiversity, and ecological enhancement of marginal contexts. For example, are required:
- methodological and design contributions that include emerging practices of co-design, making, public art, or local manufacturing;
- applied research that shows the convergence between technological innovation and the production of new cultural content and values.
3. Knowledge, planning, and care of heritage
Contributions on methods and tools to support the analysis, understanding, and interpretation of heritage with a view to its regeneration. For example, are required:
- contributions on the integration of advanced tools for analysis, modeling, and management;
- experimental approaches through sensitive technologies, adaptive practices, reversible devices, and interactive systems;
- collaborative and open-source modeling and platforms to support the design, management, and care of heritage in complex contexts.
TIMING
Abstract submission: 20th November 2025
Abstract acceptance: 15th December 2025
Article submission: 2nd March 2026
Reviewed article result: 20th April 2026
Reviewed article submission: 20th May 2026
PUBLICATION DATE TECHNE | 32
30th October 2026
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