Abstract:

“SMOTIES: Creative works with small and remote places” is a four-year European funded project aimed at transforming remote places through creativity. The Italian activities are focused on the area of Albugnano, a small town of 500 inhabitants in the Piedmont region, quite difficult to reach even though its small distance from metropolitan cities. Albugnano is - like many other hamlets in rural Europe - struggling with population degrowth and aging, as well as the threat of local heritage being forgotten. In this context, the team of Polimi DESIS Lab (Politecnico di Milano) aims at revitalizing the territory by activating local actors to participate in envisioning future scenarios and regenerating public spaces, through a multifaceted series of participatory actions.

This project sits at the crossroad between social innovation and urban regeneration in the specifics of a rural context. The process entails the synergetic use of several design approaches, such as relational, service, spatial design, looking to comprehend in the effort both tangible and intangible actors and factors that define the territory of Albugnano. This paper aims to precisely describe this: how different spatial, service and relational design approaches were used in synergy to best comprehend the complexity of the territory and hence design transformative interventions in full respect of it.

Specifically, service design practices contributed to shaping co-design workshops with citizens, turning them into an opportunity to envision not only the spatial features of a place, but also its potential to enable services and trigger experiences and interactions beyond its borders. The activities carried out contributed to mapping the local social and spatial systems and their needs, co-creating a value proposition for the public space and defining design guidelines for its activation.

Furthermore, inspired by participatory and relational art, relational design practices provided the design research team with ways to explore more of the intangible culture of the local community: activities contributed to mapping meaningful places and their symbolic value, collecting individual and common local narratives, understanding the encounters and relational networks enabled by each place.

This approach was conducted with the intent of designing a spatial intervention in public spaces that would become platform for local community activation on the long term. The spatial intervention strategy outcoming from the design process considers a systemic reading of the territory: working on multiple pivotal places of the Albugnano area, the spatial intervention strategy builds on pre-existing usages of the local spaces while connecting, promoting them and enabling imagination of new possibilities; it ties into existing networks of touristic, logistic and leisure activities, while valorising meaningful places through community-shared stories that create the local culture.

The novelty of the approach lies in how it acts as a process of placemaking, safeguarding the conception of place as a complex entity and in consideration of both its tangible and intangible assets and values. It acknowledges different subjectivities navigating the public space, the possible arising conflicts and the complexity of situated identities interacting, especially by considering spatial, experiential and relational aspects as overlapping layers that describe the way a community lives a specific territory.

Keywords:

Spatial design, service design, relational design, placemaking, co-design, remote places, design methods.