On the occasion of the annual workshop joining RWU and  UMD  architecture students at ISI Florence and their peers from the Università di Firenze, ISI Florence Professor Carlo Achilli lectured on the importance of finding a balance between natural and man made edges when working on sites that border on nature. The main project discussed in the lecture brought together different architectural disciplines such as structural consolidation, landscape planning, and design. Most importantly, the challenge posed by the site (Rocca Ripesena) was exactly what our students had to face during the workshop: how to design urban intervention on the edge of a natural site. There can be many, multifaceted answers to a question like this. As architects know, traditional techniques and materials can be used to solve contemporary issues.  Professor Achilli holds that to attain this goal, design must prioritize the environmental context, thus starting a dialogue between the site on the one hand and architecture on the other.