Empowering vulnerable women by participatory design workshops

This contribution addresses the issue of homeless women’s empowerment through design workshops and according to the capability approach. The paper presents small, ordinary stories of women that experience being designers. Besides the professional label, being a designer means to approach reality from the transformative perspective of pursuing a positive change. It also translates in claiming the space for the expression of a personal vision of the world, within a cooperative environment. It enables to experiment innovative strategies to solve problems and to pursue self-determination in practical activities

Design-led repair & reuse: An approach for an equitable, bottom-up, innovation-driven circular economy

The circular economy is a social, technological and economic paradigm that aims to build a production and consumption model focused on waste reduction and maximization of discarded matter recovery. Discussion of the circular economy often treats it as a technocratic and profit-driven phenomenon that can be developed by capital investment in a particular industrial sector without necessarily taking into account the needs of the surrounding geographic area. The promotion of the circular economy often emphasises recycling and other practices that may not fully use the recovered material but are highly automatable, thus creating only a limited number of jobs. At the same time, there is another model of the circular economy, in which small and medium-sized organizations engage in transformative and low-technology activities such as reuse and repair, benefiting local development and creating job opportunities. This model is often explicitly driven by a social development mandate. Still, it risks falling short of its goals because of a lack of expertise and a less systematic approach. This paper aims to introduce the Design-led Repair & Reuse (DLRR) framework for mitigating the short-comings of this second model, using an approach that is both sustainable and accessible to organizations with limited resources. Inspired by the principles of “Design-driven innovation”, “social & solidarity economy”, and “appropriate technology”, DLRR aims to generate a higher quality of processes and products from circular, low entropy and low capital-intensity production activities, resulting in a more solid, identifiable and conscious positioning in the reuse market. It complements the socially inclusive ethos of these third sector small and medium-sized organizations while contributing to the debate on integrating alternative perspectives into the mainstream circular economy discourse.The first part of this paper discusses the theoretical principles that have inspired the DLRR framework. The second part presents research that tests the consistency of these founding principles based on a case study of a sample of organizations in Italy that are active in circular waste transformation processes

Designing with the neighborhood: an experience of participatory design and social communication

In urban regeneration processes, inclusive and active participation dynamics of the inhabitants become fundamental to design a real transformation process both on an architectural and social level. The citizens and their involvement become both essential elements for achieving shared solutions, especially in those areas where the social and economic issues are added to urban degradation. “I numeri di Via Ghedini e Via Gallina” is an example of interdisciplinary project, aiming at an architectural upgrading of some of the public housing located in the city of Torino (Turin). Among the project activities planned, the working group ended up developing the graphic identity of the street numbers, currently missing or not so readable. The design action focused on giving a concrete form to the information design system that deeply represents the identity of the neighbourhood. An action which sets up the process of returning of the common areas to the inhabitants and emphasizes the gradual return to everyday life in the neighbourhood, after restoration works. The interaction between the numerous institutional and not institutional actors involved in the project, transformed this part of city in a true interdisciplinary laboratory capable of promoting new social and territorial balance

Social Cooperation as a Driver for a Social and Solidarity Focused Approach to the Circular Economy

The circular economy (CE) is currently a very widespread paradigm aimed at addressing the climate crisis. However, its notions seem often to be only focused on technical, industrial and economic growth-centric goals, without practically addressing social problems such as inequality and social exclusion. In this context, type B social cooperation (SC-B) emerges in the Italian context as a type of organisation explicitly aiming at addressing social issues. It has historically fulfilled this mandate by pioneering, among others, “circular” processes in the field of waste management. In doing so, it has consolidated a high level of organizational and management capacity, which has made it an exemplary model capable of innovating the CE discourse and including marginalized people while delivering high-quality environmental services. Through evidence gathered integrating different methods and sources (interviews with social cooperatives, literature review, case study research on filed actions), this paper aims to offer a reading of SC-B as a driver for promoting a social turn of CE and local development. Moving beyond waste management and towards waste reuse, SC-B could play an active role in creating local and regional waste transformation and upcycling chains, capable of creating new employment and inclusion opportunities as well as reducing environmental impacts by processing wastes directly in the territory, shortening their treatment chain

Città inclusive e coese

The text deals with the issue of inclusive cities; cities that take care of all citizens, fragile and otherwise; cities that know how to respond to people’s needs through active citizenship processes, promoting self-determination paths that make all actors aware of the use of the city, of decisions and policies; cohesive cities, which enhance the resources of each citizen, which go beyond the stereotypes and rhetorics of poverty and wealth, which make people close to each other, mutually precious

The Uovo Di Colombo Lab: Designing Against Food Waste

Food waste is an increasingly central issue in our daily lives. It is estimated that, every year, a third of food produced for human consumption is wasted. Considering this, the paper illustrates the experience of the “Uovo di Colombo Lab”, a project offering training activities that address the issue of food waste along the entire food chain, with a particular focus on the phases of recovery, redistribution, processing, and consumption. A workshop organised into mobile kits and providing an assortment of low-tech professional equipment allows young students and members of the public to experience the food transformation processes. This is achieved by applying the circular economy principles in design, creative processes, and co-design methodologies

Design against Food Poverty

What contribution can the discipline of Design make against food poverty? How can it improve access to food for the needy? How can it improve the use of food resources in socially marginalised contexts? Starting fromthese questions, the contribution illustrates four experimentations, based on a practical and participatory approach, carried out by the research team in a shelter for homeless people in the city of Turin

Co‐Design and the Collective Creativity Processes in Care Systems and Places

This article examines the topic of participatory design processes (co‐design, co‐creativity, co‐creation, and co‐production) as tools to promote models of inclusion that benefit people experiencing marginality, and as means to solicit the public dimension of the spaces in which they live and where they have access to their health and welfare services. The topic is addressed through four case studies drawn from the experience of participatory action research aiming at social inclusion and cohesion through an approach based on design anthropology. Following Jones and VanPatter’s (2009) four design domains (DD), the projects discussed in this article are the following: participatory design of devices for people with mul‐ tiple sclerosis (DD 1.0); participatory renovation of shelters for homeless people (DD 2.0); design and craft led lab aiming at social inclusion (DD 3.0); and innovation of public services for a city homeless population (DD 4.0). All these projects are driven by stakeholders’ demands for a transformation that improves the quality of users’ lives, the quality of caring services, and that they modify, temporarily or permanently, the venues where they take place. In order to support and facilitate this “desire for change,” the projects are based on wide participation and collaboration between many different stakeholders in every phase of their design processes. Methods, tools, and results will be analysed from the points of view of both users (beneficiaries and social operators/caregivers) and designers. Furthermore, the interaction between spaces, co‐design processes, and attendees will be investigated to determine how they contribute to turning those venues into citizenship environments, permeated with greater care and attention

Participatory Design Processes Towards Inclusion: Three Case Studies within Italian Social Care System

The presentation discusses the topic of participatory design processes with a systemic approach as a tool to negotiate, shape and prototype new inclusive models of citizenship and care to benefit marginal groups in society. Since 2009, our interdisciplinary research group, composed by designers and anthropologists, carries out socially engaged practices in several italian cities, entailing both methodological analysis and transformative actions on social care systems and on their users: services’ beneficiaries (e.g. asylum seekers, migrants, people affected by chronic diseases, homeless people), caregivers, services’ management. The topic will be addressed via three case studies from our !eld experience: ‘Design for Each one’, a co-design project of personalised devices for people suffering from multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy; ‘Cantiere Mambretti’, a participatory renovation of shelters for migrants and homeless people; ‘Costruire Bellezza’, a new service aiming at social inclusion based on design workshops involving homeless people and university students