COMMUNICATION DESIGN FOR URBAN SPACE: EDUCATIONAL MODELS AND EXAMPLES OF DIDACTICAL APPLICATIONS

The modern urban environment interlinks social and morphological transformations that determine powerful mutations in the landscape.
In a time of “dematerialization”, to enhance the value of the identity place is a Communication Design aim: the current necessity is to find some new suitable languages and tool able to describe the contemporary city in its complexity.
It is argued the strategic necessity of Communication Design projects able to give back meaning to places through the creation innovative interfacing between the visitors and the places. The model of formats, before designed for traditional media, are changing their structure and are implemented to give answer to the new models of digital communication.
New media and digital devices, as smart phones and tablets, allow new access to information fruition; in fact, the contents are becoming even more dynamic, interactive and participative.
Since many years the Communication Design, Multimedia Format Research Unit of Indaco Department (Politecnico di Milano) is developing researches and projects in order to implement formats and systems to communicate urban spaces.
Among several European and international design projects we might mention those most oriented to represent the sense of places and guide to experiential exploration (e.g. digital touristic guide, sound tours, emotional maps, Augmented Reality applications, etc.).
These projects use experimental, traditional and artistic forms in order to communicate the city transformations.
We can map and analyze the selected project through functional features, properties and communicative aims.
Our research has led to the identification of a strong tendency to media convergence.
The method used to map communication design projects for urban space and their features were applied in the didactical laboratory and Master thesis.
An interesting example of master degree project for place exploration was applied on Lomellina, a non-tourist area of the Lombardia region in Italy.
The project used interesting visual representation of the selected area in order to organize an unconventional tourist guide.