Urban Solitude and Participatory 3D: Giving a Voice to the Sikh Community Redesigning Their Space
FBK Aula Piccola
Fondazione Bruno Kessler - Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali
Aula Piccola
FBK Aula Piccola
Fondazione Bruno Kessler - Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali
Aula Piccola
On one side, anonymous industrial warehouses lost in the Po Valley countryside; on the other, imposing monuments woven into Singapore’s skyline. The geography of gurdwaras tells a story of extreme polarity. In Italy, this architecture suffers from severe spatial marginality: the physical invisibility of the temples confines the Sikh community to a state of urban solitude, detached from the rest of citizenship.
Through the framework of the European GAP project, the seminar explores how to overturn this invisibility at the crossroads of geography and Digital Humanities. The digital tool is thus stripped of its purely technical dimension to become a process of listening and social activation. It highlights the ongoing participatory 3D reconstruction of two gurdwaras in Italy. Working on-site alongside believers, gathering geometric data becomes a catalyst for collective reflection. Building the three-dimensional model means, above all, giving a voice to the community: a tool to map current needs, negotiate their presence, and imagine tomorrow’s space.
SILVIA OMENETTO | University Roma 1
Cycle of Seminars: “Solitude and Communion in Religion and Ethics“
Scientific coordination: Massimo Leone, FBK-ISR
The event will be in-person in the FBK Aula Piccola, while seats last, and online, and it will be held in Italian.
Registration by October 23, 2026 at 12:00 a.m. is required to arrange the connection.
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Image: AdobeStock_518968971
Speakers
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Silvia Omenetto - SpeakerSilvia Omenetto is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Global Fellow at Sapienza University of Rome (SARAS Department) and a Visiting Scholar at Singapore Management University. Her current research analyses the architectural transformations of Sikh temples between Italy and Singapore. Her research interests include the materiality of religions in urban space, religious and funerary architectures, and the application of digital humanities methods, particularly Geographic Information Systems (GIS), to the spatial analysis of religion. Her recent publications include: Omenetto, S. (2026). ‘I have seen all places, but none can compare to you’: Classifying gurdwara architecture in the Sikh diaspora. Sikh Formations, 1–30.
Registration
Registration to this event is mandatory.
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Organizers
The initiative was also realized thanks to the contribution of "Direzione generale Educazione, ricerca e istituti culturali" of the Ministry of Culture.