Urban Islands
Francesca Cocchiara
Antonio Pinna
Sergios Strigklogiannis
Sergios Strigklogiannis is an architect and post-doc researcher at the NTUA - Athens, focusing on common spaces, collective memory, and participation.
Francesca Cocchiara is an architect from Cagliari, Italy. As an independent researcher, she
has developed a strong interest in how people shape their own environment and vice versa.
Stefano Aresti is an independent researcher focusing on urbanism, marginal territories, the impacts of climate change, and the dynamics of commons and welfare.
Antonio Pinna is an art historian specializing in cultural mediation and an expert in museum education. He has led educational workshops in museums for young audiences and has recently focused on reconceptualizing and mediating the Costume Museum of Iglesias.
What brought us together are personal and professional experiences and a common interest in exploring cities through an islanders perspective.
'Urban Islands' is an art and research project that investigates how urban life unfolds in island contexts — and, conversely, how the notion of islandness manifests within urban environments. The remoteness — and in some cases, isolation — of island communities has often led to the development of distinctive ways of producing everyday spaces and social practices. These practices, on one hand, reimagine public space as commons, and on the other, foster networks of collectivity, participation, and mutual care.
Reflecting a similar pattern, urban areas that are excluded or cut off — whether entire neighborhoods or marginal spaces — tend to generate their own forms of life and spatial practices. Many such areas function like an archipelago within the urban fabric: separate yet interconnected, forming a constellation of urban islands in the city.
The project 'Urban Islands' is a lens to explore the themes of commons, ecology, isolation, and liminality, revealing the diverse forms of adaptability that emerges in both island and urban contexts. In practice, the project unfolds through multiple media — including critical mapping, photography, filmmaking, and writing — aiming to discover Urban Islands as a source of knowledge, resilience, and learning.