Co-designing Contents With Situated Stakeholders: An In-Field Process in Nolo (Milan)

Abstract

Neighborhoods today emerges as “design incubators” as they are characterized by the proactivity of local actors — such as citizens, shopkeepers, associations, informal groups — acting at the core of the design process by developing brand-new and tailor-made solutions and at the same time provide environmental, economic, and social beneficial transformation in an inclusive and democratic way. This work presents considerations from a two-years initiative named Off Campus Nolo (OCN), a living lab promoted by the Politecnico di Milano that opened its doors in the Nolo neighborhood (Milan). With its rich set of contents (activities, projects, and events) the experience of OCN demonstrates how creating a bridge to transfer the academic skills on a neighborhood-community level can improve the quality of actions to be developed, also exploring new ways of spreading the knowledge from the academia and prompting new forms of social innovation within neighborhood communities.