The text explores the role of design in encouraging forms, tools and processes to innovate the space of cities proximal to people. In the perspective of contemporary challenges oriented to a sustainable development, the issue of open space of the city undertakes a strategic importance in determining ways of use, collective behavior, and well being.

The design, through its ability to act on a dimensional scale of small and close, of habitable and lovable space, contributes to innovate things and environments, services and interfaces, producing a proximal city as a group of shared experiences for the communities that inhabit it.

Through experimental actions, participatory processes, it is possible to imagine different fates, unpredictable and flexible, exposed to relationship, to slowness, and to narration.

CONTENTS

Introduction

01/ Interior design and public space
1.1 The urban interiors
1.2 Contemporary urban interiors and design: directions from the contemporary debate
1.3 Open challenges for the next cities

02/ Contemporary Perspectives: an overview of Project-Actions
2.1 The question of the scale
2.2 Implementing comfort and welcome
2.3 Designing interactive spaces through ludic approaches
2.4 Towards slow cities. Designing for making people walk

03/ The design of relationships and interactions
3.1 Space and sociality
3.2 The design of significant spaces and places for transitory communities

04/ The design of the ephemeral spaces
4.1 Design as a collective act
4.2 The ephemeral between ethics and aestethics
4.3 The ephemeral as a tool for innovation
4.4 Set design and narratives. Light design for new urban narratives

05/ The design of accessible places and neighbourhoods
5.1 Design between urban regeneration and suburbs
5.2 Designing forgotten places: re-adressing spaces
5.3 The design of proximal places

06/The role of design research between mediation and project activation
6.1 When design enhances the identity of the place and shares transformative narratives
6.2 When design listens to places and makes opportunities visible
6.3 When design develops shared solutions and activates experiments that drive change

Agnese Rebaglio
designer and PhD, Associate Professor at the Design Dept. of Politecnico di Milano. She develops design research on innovative “hospitable” places, with a particular focus on the urban contexts and on the settings of experimental spaces and services for sustainable cities. She’s scientific director of the Specializing Master “Design for Public Spaces” provided by POLI.design.