Unconventional Spaces for Art and Design: Enabling Community Synergy. A Methodological Approach

The design process of the studio described in this chapter focuses on public spaces, both indoor and outdoor, by establishing connections and relationships with the local citizens – connected to shops, associations, informal groups and neighbourhood committees – and with a specific local community: contemporary artists who own their art gallery, exhibition and work spaces in the Milan NoLo District. The focus of the studio resonates with the most advanced fields of research and experimentation that the European Commission is now fostering through research and innovation programmes. More specifically: 1) how “public spaces” both shape, and are shaped, by, cultural activity, including art, and how this can bring about integration of people, including at the political and economic levels; and 2) how the co-creation of public goods (services, spaces and strategies) can actually become a way to engage citizens and stakeholders of all kinds in shaping the European identity. As stated in Chapter 3, the connection between contemporary arts and the bottom-up transformations of urban spaces has a multi-faceted role in establishing brand new social innovations and place-making processes. The key point of this shift is the active engagement of local actors; the studio enhanced this concept in its process. This chapter focuses on how these broad fields of research have been transferred into the MSc Interior Design Final Studio held by Davide Fassi, Laura Galluzzo, Anna Meroni and Xiaocun Zhu helped by Annalinda De Rosa and Martina Mazzarello, in the academic year 2016/17 at the School of Design, Politecnico di Milano. The description of the various phases of the studio is structured to focus on the methodological approaches adopted. The first – Investigation – embraced notions of Constructivist Grounded Theory as a qualitative strategy of inquiry together with an in the field approach. A dialectic in the data collection has been effective in opening a range of design possibilities. The second – Designing Concept – has been based on Participatory Action Research and Co-design tools to iterate the design process. The final course step – Prototyping – sees a cross-pollination and communication among different fields of design for the project definition, which are then realized in the Event phase