Simonetta Armondi and Agim Kërçuku winners of SOM Foundation 2025 European Research Prize

The two researchers from Politecnico di Milano, DAStU receive a €20,000 prize to conduct original research that contributes to this year’s topic, “Exploring the Potential of Mobility Corridors”.

As part of the project Disrupting the Corridor: Water/Ground Mobilities Across the Adriatic, Simonetta Armondi and Agim Kërçuku will focus on the Adriatic region between Albania and Italy exploring how mobility infrastructures, such as the Trans Adriatic Pipeline and thermoelectric power complexes, mediate flows of water, energy, nature, capital, ideas, space, and politics.

This proposal examines how water, land, and energy infrastructures interact across the Adriatic land-sea basin. The research seeks to challenge and redefine what “corridor mobility” means, as well as the epistemic tools for envisioning a fair ecological future. The team shows that corridor mobility is a material, social, and ecological infrastructure that design disciplines often overlook.

Thw jury, led by SOM Foundation Executive Director Iker Gil and including Pedro Gadanho (Architect, author and independent curator, Lisbon), Meredith Glaser (Chief Executive Officer, Urban Cycling Institute, Amsterdam and Professor at Ghent University), and Carlos Mínguez Carrasco (Chief Curator, ArkDes - the Swedish National Centre for Architecture and Design, Stockholm).

The European Research Prize was created in 2021 to cultivate new ideas and meaningful research that addresses the critical issues of our time.

More info on SOM Foundation website at link