Adria Boynton (MDes R&R 2017) has been awarded Harvard’s Sinclair Kennedy Traveling Fellowship. As a Fellow, she will spend a year studying flood risk and adaptation in Italy. She will be based in Florence and affiliated with the Università degli Studi di Firenze and the Centro Interuniversitario di Scienze del Territorio (CIST), which supports research on land issues and cultural heritage.
Adria’s fellowship work will include studying the impact of Arno River flooding on Italian architecture, analyzing Italian strategies for mitigating flood risk (from Leonardo da Vinci to Carlo Scarpa), and making recommendations for resilient design strategies in riverine cities like Florence. This work will be informed by field research in Venice, Pisa, and Genoa.
Adria’s previous work developed design strategies for preparing Boston and other coastal cities for environmental risks including sea level rise. The Sinclair Kennedy Traveling Fellowship will allow her to build on resilient design work produced while living in Rome in 2013. It is her hope that the fellowship will facilitate an intercultural exchange surrounding the flood-related risks faced by Italy and the United States, in order to work toward a more resilient future.
