Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale/Milano will run two Experiment Labs to involve visitors, citizens and the representatives of the 11 partners to “challenge the city scale”.
The first Experiment Lab will take place at BASE during the exhibition of Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale/Milano starting from the design experience of the Masterclass “Temporary Urban Solutions”. Two of the best actions developed by the students and the local associations will be put on place: how to upcycle second hand objects into an urban setting and how to hack abandoned public space with acupunctural playgrounds.
The second Experiment Lab will take place @LaPiana. It will involve all the representative of the 11 partners in several activities in direct contact with the local associations and the public space of La Piana. It will be the chance to get in touch with the theatre, the neighbourhood, to explore the context and to experiment this local urban reality in Milan.
http://temporaryurbansolutions.tumblr.com/
Framework
The public space is becoming a place of social innovation in which creative communities act to create new solutions to everyday problems that the economic system and the society are no longer able to give. The bottom-up actions of these active groups of citizens who choose their answers is combined with top-down action of the institutions that can’t turn a blind eye to the obvious needs of the citizens. Temporary solutions often give a new perspective to the use of public spaces by creating real scenarios that could be develop into long-term solutions after a prototyping and testing phase. This course is open to postgraduate students, PhD candidates and it includes collaboration with citizens, associations, informal group by being part of the design process.
Main goal
This course is about temporary design actions to be done in the outdoor area of the Milan theatre “Atir Ringhiera” known as “La Piana” located close to metro stop M2 Abbiategrasso (Milan). This actions will benefit from the multidisciplinary background of the participants (interior, communication, product, fashion and service design) and will be mainly diviede in htree main categories:
– urban installations: to be interactive by engaging people of the neighbourhood to use the space in an active way
– services to support the use of the space and the installations put on it
– communication of the whole process and results
The tools of strategic planning and service design, combined with spatial/interior/environmental design and the event management, can create a bridge between La Piana area and the neighborhood by defining a system of design actions that becomes an incubator for new synergies experiments.
Methodology
Temporary Urban Solutions will use the design thinking process (codified by IDEO and DSchool) by following these three main steps:
– Inspiration: an in-the-field and desk research to understand the context both from social and spatial point of view and defining the main target (personas) to address the final solutions. Students will be introduced to space and team of Ringhiera and will then venture into the surrounding community by using outreach and surveys tools. To do that they will be divided in 12 groups of 4 to 5 people with different background.
– Ideation: developing concepts based on the key-learnings acquired in the inspiration phase. The concepts are co-designed with people from the neighbourhood by connecting each workteam to a specific association/informal citizens group
– Implementation: prototyping and testing solutions during the Experimentation Labs
The course will explore the opportunities to enhance the sense of belonging to this place, attracting people and actions within new activities. The surface of La Piana needs technical services (DIY infrastructures), a process of formal identification (installations), in order to host social activities (service design) to be put on stage (storytelling) through a performative act (theatre).
Expected results
Participants are required to work in team to design temporary solutions (service, spaces, toolkits) to be tested during the experimentation lab (prototyped) in order to support and carry out the existing actions and to develop new “design activist” solutions.
During the Milan Design Week, Human Cities presents “Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale/Milano”, an interactive exhibition in a 500 sqm space at BASE Milano (Via Bergognone 34, Milano) during the Milan Design Week, April 12th-17th 2016.
The event is the first stage of a traveling exhibition across Europe: in the next 3 years, all the partners will exhibit the work in progress of the research. This is a wandering path, an itinerant circus sets up in the partners cities to show how they are “challenging the city scale”, like a continuous experience in different places and contexts where everything is connected to compose the story of all the experiences .
It will be an itinerary, a path throughout Europe, a way to tell how we are “challenging the scale”. A wandering circus to be settled in the partners cities.
The Circus will be the main concept of the exhibition: as a continuous experience place by place and as a suspension like an acrobat in, a place without space-time. The exhibition during Human Cities Challenging the city Scale/Milano will be focused on the equilibrium inside the circus where everything is connected to create a story of all the experiences together.
During the exhibition there will be an on-going Experiment Lab where people could interact and activate the space. The exhibition and the Experiment Lab are results of an active design experience between Politecnico di Milano – Design Department and School of Design, with “Atir Ringhiera” theatre in Milan and 11 local associations around “La Piana”, a square of 6000 sqm in front of the theatre. This design experience took place during the Masterclass “Temporary Urban Solutions”, where 62 international students from more than 10 different countries worked for 5 months to develop spaces and services which could reactivate “La Piana”.
“Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale/Milano” will host the College of Design and Innovation of Tongji University – Shanghai, showing the research projects done in an extra-european urban contexts and in collaboration with local organizations: the street food trend, “Open Your Space” involving the Siping Lu’s community, “Design Harvest” in Chongming Island, the biomimicry, the community FabLab(s).
Co-School. Experimentation Labs. Rethinking Learning
Jarmo Suominen, Antti Ahlava, Pekka Tynkkynen, Fernando Nieto
Co-creation process with schoolchildren and teachers, two studio courses, one design workshop and a concrete building and renewal project
In collaboration with RCA Service Design and Tongji University
Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale 2014-2018. Co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union
Video credits
Reporter and editor: Eini Nyman
Camera: Silja Ylitalo, Eini Nyman
Music: Setuniman @ freesound.org
Human Cities_Challenging the City Scale/Milano will host the Human Cities annual meeting involving more than 30 participants from the 11 partners.
The meeting will be an opportunity to share how the European cities involved in the programme, are activating public spaces, to schedule the future steps, to promote the activities of the network through a seminar, to deep dive into the Experiment lab at “La Piana” and to visit key public places in Milan.
PROGRAMME:
April 12th-17th//HUMAN CITIES EXHIBITION/ MILANO
BASE Milano, Via Bergognone 34, 20144, Milano
April 13th//ANNUAL HUMAN CITIES PARTNERS MEETING
13.00-18.30 in Politecnico di Milano – Bovisa campus, via Candiani 72, Milano
April 14th//LAB
10.00-11.00 Visit to exhibition + Experiment Lab @BASE Milano, Via Bergognone 34, 20144, Milano
11.00-12.30 Human cities Seminar @BASE Milano, Via Bergognone 34, 20144, Milano
12.30 Exhibition Opening @BASE Milano, Via Bergognone 34, 20144, Milano
13.30 Bike tour to La Piana (Teatro Ringhiera ATIR), Via Boifava 17, 20142, Milano
14.30-18.00 Experiment Lab @La Piana (Teatro Ringhiera ATIR), Via Boifava 17, 20142, Milano
18.00 Bike tour to BASE Milano, Via Bergognone 34, 20144, Milano
18.30 Event at Triennale Exhibition @BASE Milano, Via Bergognone 34, 20144, Milano
April 15th//TOUR
9.30-13.00 New Public spaces in Milan: guided tour
13.00-14.00 Lunch and end of the activities
