Logistification and the Typo-Logistic City: Rethinking Infrastructure, Housing and Design in European SEZs

This paper presents the outcomes of an applied research project currently underway at the Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, focused on the design and theorization of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) as spatial and architectural devices. Starting from the cross-border SEZ of Gorizia–Nova Gorica (ITA-SLO), the study proposes a broader critical framework for understanding the ongoing logistification of the European space – a process in which logistics becomes a morphogenetic force shaping infrastructures, territories, and ways of living. Rather than treating SEZ as merely economic or regulatory constructs, the paper explores their potential as inhabited infrastructures and urban laboratories where housing, production, and flows intersect. The concept of highwaying is introduced as a design method to reinterpret road infrastructures as relational and habitable structures. A projective lexicon – “thickness, edge, path, interface” – is deployed to guide the rethinking of infrastructural architecture and urbanism. Through theoretical insight and a multiscalar case study methodology, the paper outlines a vision of SEZ as hybrid territories of architectural experimentation, where spatial quality, logistical performance, and social inclusion are not mutually exclusive, but co-constitutive.