Underground Education: Attitudes towards More Underground-oriented Educational Programs

Underground space use is gaining more and more attention together with the raise in urbanization level and the increased need of facilities, services and consequently urban space. The underground development involves several multidisciplinary actors such as technicians, architects, engineers, urban planners, etc. that have different expertise and learning patterns among each other.This paper aims at presenting the results of a Survey involving the ACUUS community and aiming at identifying and analysing the paths, and more in depth the educational ones, leading to develop an expertise in underground space. Moreover, the main drivers leading to improve the diffusion of underground knowledge as well what are the main criticalities affecting the perception of underground space are highlighted from the different perspectives. The final goal of the research is to deepen the knowledge on experts educational background in order to understand which are main drivers that can lead to change the perception and the attitude in “studying”, “designing”, “planning” and “working” in a more underground-oriented society. Another important goal is to demonstrate that education covers a key role in driving the opinion on underground space use.