About LamoLab

HISTORY & MISSION

LamoLab was initially established in 2020 in result of a five year research collaboration on the high-altitude terraced vineyards in Lamole, Toscany. The collaboration commenced in 2015 and resulted in annual field research and surveys from 2016 onwards. In 2020 LamoLab was established.

LamoLab focuses on the development of data-driven multi-domain and trans-scalar modelling and analysis of environments and landscapes that integrate traditional agriculture / horticulture with construction / architecture, as well as peri-urban and urban environments, especially those that require deeper integration of green infrastructure, ecosystems and urban agriculture. The aim is to recover locally specific land knowledge, and to support related policy and management, as well as adaptation and design, and the transfer of productive landscape knowledge into urban environments.

The activities of LamoLab address three scales:

Local Scale: Annual surveys are undertaken on selected case studies (e.g. high-altitude terraced vineyards in Tuscany, lemon houses at Lake Garda, etc). The aim is to recover local land knowledge for the purpose of supporting and protecting diffuse heritage and quality produce, as well as adapting knowledge for use in urban agriculture and horticulture.

Regional & National Scale: The findings of the case studies inform the development of computational analyses, modelling and decision support for agriculture and urban agriculture in the region of the case studies and on the national scale.

International & Global Scale: LamoLab undertakes or collaborates on research projects and provides consultancy on the subject matter.

The LamoLab steering committee establishes the priorities and manages the development and operation of the research centre. LamoLab Steering Committee: Prof. Dr. Grazia Tucci, Dr. Erica Parisi, Prof. Dr. Michael U. Hensel, Dr. Defne Sunguroğlu Hensel, Paolo Socci. LamoLab Coordinating Manager: Dr. Defne Sunguroğlu Hensel. Email: defnesungurogluhensel@lamolab.net

Paolo Socci is the proprietor of Fattoria di Lamole. He first studied mechanical engineering in Florence and Bologna. Since 1970 he works in Lamole. Starting in 2003 he has restored a number of terraced vineyards with dry stone walls in Lamole.

UNIVERSITY OF FLORENCE

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Grazia Tucci (PhD in Geodetic and Topographical Sciences) is an architect and Associate Professor of Topography and Cartography at the University of Florence where she teaches courses in Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, and in Architecture. She is member of the CIPA-Heritage Documentation Executive Board and Member of the ICOMOS Italian National Committee; co-chair in the WG V/1 “Multi-level Education & Training – Curriculum Development and Methodology” of ISPRS; founder and Chair of the GEORES International Conference. She is head of the Geomatics for Environment and Conservation of Cultural Heritage – GECO Laboratory, whose activities are mainly focused on documentation, conservation and enhancement of Environment and Cultural Heritage with innovative technologies. She is also head of the Survey, Cultural Heritage, Monitoring, Analysis – SCHEMA Laboratory, which aims at developing new techniques for surveying and monitoring environment and infrastructures in order to support decision makers in risk management applications. She has been involved in several national and international research projects, where she participated in surveying activities of important monumental complexes such as: Fortezza da Basso, Baptistery of St. John and the Accademia Gallery in Florence, Torre del Mangia in Siena, Towers of San Gimignano, Multan Bazaar in Pakistan, the Cathedral of St Nicholas and church of Santo Domingo in La Rioja, Argentina, the Casa Martì Museum in Havana, Cuba, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. She participates in scientific committees and editorial boards of series and journals; she is reviewer for Italian and International Journals. Author of more than 200 academic publications. She has been involved in research activities in Lamole since 2015 and she is a member of the steering board.

Valentina Bonora graduated cum laude in Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Turin (2000) and holds PhD in Drawing and Survey for the protection of building and land heritage (Polytechnic of Turin, 2005). She qualified for being associate professor, according to Italian regulation (ASN). From the a.y. 2005-06 to the a.y. 2007-08 she taught courses (Topography and Cartography, Drawing) as Temporary Professor at the Polytechnic of Turin. She is teaching Geomatics courses at University of Florence since 2015. Her research activities in the geomatic field have been supported by research grants. She has taken part in many important archaeological and architectural surveys in Italy and abroad. She took part in different operating units working for national and international research projects financed by MIUR and EU, focusing her activities in particular on studying and testing innovative solutions for metric documentation and monitoring of Cultural and Land Heritage. She has been involved in research activities in Lamole since 2016.

Francesco Mugnai is Assistant Professor of Geomatics at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Florence. He obtained a Master’s Degree in Applied Geology at the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Florence. From the same department, he obtained a Ph.D. degree with a study on the Integration of laser scanning survey techniques and wireless sensor networks for the development of rapid alert systems. He spent a period of training at MIT in Boston. He also obtained the professional qualification of Geologist in 2007. During the post-doctorate period, he had the opportunity to gain experience in the field of hydrogeological risks and instability processes in several countries, such as Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Malta, China, Ireland, Mozambique, Canada, Kenya. From 2015 to 2019 he has worked as a researcher at the Joint Research Center of the European Commission in the field of Crisis Management and Scientific Development as scientific coordinator of experimental activities on Geomatics’ subjects, in particular using Lidar and Interferometric RADAR technique for monitoring and survey and for the development of new research and risk awareness methodologies and techniques. He participated in several National and International programs and peer-reviewed projects founded by OCHA, EC, ONU, UNESCO. He attended and organized international conferences and workshops on Geomatics and Crisis Management. He is part of the scientific committee of the Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Center of the European Commission. He is author of 50+ articles in international scientific journals, scientific reports for policy, conference proceedings, book chapters. He is the first inventor of 4 international patents on robotics for inspections and orientation assessment of submerged surfaces. He teaches Remote Sensing, Topography, Cartography and Geographic Information Systems courses for MSc and Ph.D. students.

Andrea Masiero is Associate Professor of Geomatics at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Florence. He received his MSc Degree in Computer Engineering and his PhD degree in Automatic Control and Operational Research from the University of Padua. He held a post-doc position at the Interdepartmental Research Center of Geomatics of the University of Padua from 2012 to 2019. His research interests range from Geomatics, Mobile Mapping, Positioning and Navigation, Machine Learning to Computer Vision, Smart Camera Networks, modeling and control of Adaptive Optics systems. His research mainly focused on sensor integration and information fusion, positioning, photogrammetry, LiDAR data processing, visual and LiDAR odometry, statistical and mathematical modelling, machine and deep learning. He is committed in national and international scientific committees (secretary of ISPRS WG I/7 Mobile Mapping Technology 2016-2021, chair of IAG WG Vision Aided Positioning and Navigation 2020-2024) and research groups related to geomatics. He was visiting researcher at the Department of Geomatics of the University of Calgary (Canada), Mobile Multi-Sensor System (MMSS) Research Group, in 2018, and at the Digital Photogrammetry Research Group (DPRG) of the Purdue University (West Lafayette, US), in 2017. He has been in the scientific committee of several international scientific conferences, and co-organizer of the 12th International Conference on Mobile Mapping Technology 2021. He is author of 80+ articles in international scientific journals, conference proceedings and book chapters. He is the recipient of the best poster award at the ISPRS TCII symposium in 2018, best paper award at the FIG working week 2019, and FIG article of the month in July and August 2019. He teaches Geomatics, Topography and Cartography, Photogrammetry, Least Squares Adjustment, Positioning and Navigation courses for MSc and PhD students.

Erica Isabella Parisi graduated cum laude in Applied Science for Cultural Heritage at the Sapienza University of Rome (2012) and holds a PhD in Science for Conservation of Cultural Heritage (University of Florence, XXVIII cycle, 2015). Conservation Scientist for Cultural Heritage, her expert field has been mainly related to diagnostic investigations through chemical-analytic techniques from 2012 to 2017 at the CNR-ISMN of Rome and at the Department of Chemistry in Florence. In particular, she has experience in the micro-chemical and micro-structural analysis of metallic artifacts and in the development of film-forming polymeric cleaning systems for the removal of corrosion products. From 2017, she has been carrying out research activities at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Florence on digital surveys with multi-spectral sensors in the field of Cultural Heritage and Environment. In particular, she has experience in the use of UAVs with thermal and multispectral sensors for heritage and land monitoring. Her research is also focused on the application of innovative educational approaches for teaching Geomatics. Since 2017 she is postdoctoral researcher (ICAR/06) for the project PRIN2015 “GAMHer – Geomatics Data Acquisition and Management for Landscape and Built Heritage. She has been involved in research activities in Lamole since 2017 and she is a member of the steering board.

SOUTHEAST UNIVERSITY

Architecture Internationalization Demonstration School, Nanjing, China

Defne Sunguroğlu Hensel (BA Hons AA Dip MSc EmTech PhD) is a trained architect and partner in OCEAN net and OCEAN Architecture | Environment. She is Associate Professor for Landscape Architecture and Urban Ecology at Southeast University in Nanjing, China, and researcher in the H2020 FET project Ecolopes at the Technical University in Munich. Her work focuses on integrative and adaptive architectural design in green construction with focus on urban ecosystem functions and urban food production. In this contaxt she focuses on design methodology, especially on design computing, data-integrated design and design decision support systems. Previously she taught at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Technical University in Munich, and University of Technology Sydney. She is a member of the steering board and coordinating manager of LamoLab.

VIENNA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Department of Digital Architecture and Planning

Michael U. Hensel (Dip. Ing. Grad Dip Des AA PhD)  is a registered architect. He is a co-founder of the international network practice OCEAN, and was partner in OCEAN NORTH and founding and acting chairperson of OCEAN Design Research Association. Presently he is partner in OCEAN net and OCEAN Architecture | Environment. He is Professor at Vienna University of Technology where he leads the Department for Digital Architecture and Planning. Previously he taught at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, Berlage Institute Amsterdam, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Technical University in Munich, Rice University in Houston and University of Technology Sydney. He was director of the Research Center for Architecture and Tectonics in Oslo, innovation fellow at the University of Sydney and honorary fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Technical University in Munich. He serves on the LamoLab steering board.

Jakub Tyc is an architect, university assistant and doctoral candidate at the Department for Digital Architecture and Planning at Vienna University of Technology. Coming into academia from practice, he worked previously on diverse projects in Europe and Asia, many of which have been constructed. Jakub studied at the Technical University in Kraków and Technical University Delft. He completing internships at CoopHimmelb(l)au and L-A-V-A Berlin during his studies. After practicing at Ingenhoven architects for three years and completing his architect license in Germany, he moved to Vienna to join the team of Delugan Meissl Associated Architects. In 2019 he joined the Department of Digital Architecture and Planning of Vienna University of Technology, teaching design studio with Professor Michael Hensel. He researches the relations between architecture and photogrammetry in the context of data-driven design, investigating data-driven processes to evaluate relations between buildings, their surroundings and the environment.

CLIMATEFLUX

Ata Chokhachian (Dr.- Ing.) is a research scientist, educator, and advisor in the domains of building technology and urban climate, developing and employing computational decision-making processes, tools, and workflows for architects and urban planners. Since 2015, he has been appointed as a research associate at the chair of Building Technology and Climate Responsive Design, as well as chair for Architecture Informatics at the Technical University of Munich. In 2022, he successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation in developing experimental and simulation-based tools to quantify outdoor thermal comfort conditions in urban environments. In the summer of 2019, he was appointed as visiting research fellow at the Sustainable Design Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In January 2020, he co-founded Climateflux, a company offering platforms for data-driven and computational workflows for acquiring climatic knowledge.

Daniele Santucci (Dr.- Ing.) is a scientist, educator, and advisor for decarbonization strategies. He is deputy head of the Chair for Building Technology at RWTH Aachen University and co-founded Climateflux, a company that consults architecture firms, public institutions, and private companies on strategies and design solutions to increase public health. His professional expertise is in environmental engineering, low carbon design, and computational transscalar workflows targeted to achieve carbon neutrality in the built environment.

PRACTICE PARTNERS

OCEAN Architecture | Environment

Climateflux