A project developed within the framework of the Master in Eco-Social Design and born from the common intentions and collaboration between the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Faculty of Design and Art), the social cooperative OfficineVispa with the support of the Office for Family, Women, Youth and Social Promotion of the Municipality of Bozen-Bolzano. The student teams collaborated with OfficineVispa, other local actors and citizens o develop convivial and social-ecological projects
Local
Italy
Municipality of Bozen-Bolzano
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): OfficineVispa Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Sergio Last name of representative: Previte Gender: Male Nationality: Italy Function: Social worker Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Piazzetta Anne Frank 9 Town: Bolzano - Bozen Postal code: 39100 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 347 655 7476 E-mail:sergio.previte@officinevispa.com Website:https://officinevispa.com/
Name of the organisation(s): Free University of Bozen-Bolzano Type of organisation: University or another research institution First name of representative: Kris Last name of representative: Krois Gender: Male Nationality: Germany Function: Director of the Master in Eco-Social Design at UniBZ Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: piazza Università 1 Town: Bolzano - Bozen Postal code: 39100 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 0471 015224 E-mail:kris.krois@unibz.it Website:https://designdisaster.unibz.it/
The project moves within an area of Bolzano's don Bosco district, which is rather central to it, a social housing quadrangle comprising approximately 3500 inhabitants. The 'Lotto 4' (this is the name of the quadrilateral of houses) represents a small microcosm with respect to the neighbourhood and the city: born on the ashes of the experience of the 'Case Semirurali' - small two- or three-family houses built to feed working-class immigration from other areas of Italy (especially Veneto and the south of Italy) during fascism first and the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s later -, now managed by the IPES (Institute for Social Housing in South Tyrol, a bi-lingual province in the far north-east of the country), today represents an interesting workplace for those working in the socio-cultural sphere, with the challenges of multicultural and multi-generational coexistence present. One of the threats to integration is the difficulty of thinking about and governing public space in a way that is inclusive and suitable for unprecedented uses, in some ways, such as those of younger generations, perhaps with a migrant background. Although the municipality of Bolzano is interested in these challenges, the times of the bureaucracy do not always coincide with those of the changing reality of the neighbourhood and this often creates phenomena that can be interpreted differently depending on the point of view taken: the 'natives' often experience an invasion of the safe and quiet spaces by the younger generation, and the latter do not find elsewhere spaces of expression in which they can transit with their liquid and hybrid ways, often difficult to categorise.
Urbanism
Care
Social-work
Design
Commons
The students (who have just arrived from all over the world to study eco-social design in Bolzano) are working together with the OfficineVispa social cooperative of Bolzano - Don Bosco on the development of the district towards a more supportive and sustainable future. Special attention is given to different social care practices and social infrastructures, which enable inhabitants and stakeholders to take care of each other, the built environment and nature. With their micro-contributions, they learn, together with the people and organisations of don Bosco, to take bigger and bigger steps towards solidarity-based and sustainable ways of living and producing for the future.
Most of the students have never heard of the neighbourhood before. So, first, they have to get inside it and understand its complexity. They try to discover micro-potentialities located and linked to big issues such as urban commons, food sovereignty, circular economy, biodiversity, etc. TCC builds on past projects to facilitate desirable long-term developments that can be adapted and scaled up elsewhere. As an example, the 'Selvacity' project aims to transform Bolzano into a species-rich, colourful city; through the use of guerrilla gardening actions, open spaces around the don Bosco neighbourhood are to be used to sow wildflowers together.
The students engage in collective dialogues, creative interventions and workshops. Step by step they develope formats for workshops and for interventions in public space, that in one way or another bring people, ideas and tools together to “do something”. In all their diversity all projects aim at facilitating collaborations and the beautiful experience that it is possible to do something together. To learn together in ways that feel free, light and empowering. This is not nothing in times that tend to be disempowering, leading people to withdraw, isolate, and above all to give up the idea of being able to change things together. Doing something together means acting differently within systems that reduce us to being competitors in work, school, consumption and even spare time. Ultimately, it can thus become an approach for not giving up hope completely. As an example, the 'Tessuto Urbano' project aims to activate a common space-time; a floating space that interrupts the imposing limitations temporarily, and hence allows a re–appropriation of time from daily routine.
Being largely implemented in universally accessible locations, the project is an excellent example in terms of both accessibility and affordability (all activities are offered free of charge to citizens). The local level of government closest to the citizen (in Bolzano represented by the district councils, political decision-making bodies) is involved from the very beginning of the project. The principles of eco-social design are applied in an appropriate and functional way for the local dimension of the district, stimulating its transformation in positive terms.
The project explores the themes of urban regeneration and care, trying to deepen, through a free, open and direct knowledge, the operational dimension of the territorial work of the institutional, informal, self-organised realities that animate the projects operating around the specific space of 'Lot IV'. TCC interprets regeneration from the point of view of the relationship and collaboration between subjects and organisations in the territory. This represents a hummus of diversity and resources to be shared in a transformative challenge of doing together towards a collaborative view of social action, so that care work and welfare are reasserted as weavers of social connections and not just service providers.
As a starting point and foundation, the students are involving residents and different actors of the area. To facilitate this process, the students are working (during their first academic semester) one day a week (for several weeks) in and around the spaces of La Rotonda, the project/service located in the very centre of 'Lot 4'. At the end of the semester, the elaborated prototype projects are displayed in public, so that all residents can discuss their potential and decide which of them could be developed and together with which territorial actors. A documentation set is also prepared and handed over to the actively involved partners, actors and stakeholders. as an example, the 'Farsi Luogo' project was developed on the don Bosco square (the heart of the Italian neighborhood in Bolzano); starting from past year’s results through the 'Piazzati' project, students wanted to deepen the needs and desires of the community; based on this, they created 5 photomontages to propose concrete visions to the residents on which they could express their opinion; after a a few-days feedback session, they evaluated the neighborhood’s preferences and mapped them by age group; these results were presented graphically and have then been handed over to the responsible parties, as well as the commissioned architect, who will soon begin a project to redesign piazza don Bosco.
The municipality of Bozen/Bolzano was an immediate source of support for the project, in terms of financing, information and promotion of the initiative and facilitating the necessary permits and authorisations for the various interventions on the sites. The local level of government closest to the citizen (in Bolzano represented by the 'district councils', political decision-making bodies) is involved from the very beginning of the project. The IPES (the public institute for social housing in Alto Adige), which owns most of the spaces where the interventions took place, is also involved at the operational, information and dissemination level and in facilitating access to the sites for students and also in matters of authorisations and permits. The non-profit associations, and realities in general, of the neighbourhood were aware of their participation in the project and involved within the partnership network that made it possible and current. Lastly, the neighbourhood high school is strongly and continuously involved in the attempt to weave solid and lasting connections from which the new generations can also benefit.
TCC interprets urban regeneration from the perspective of the relationship and collaboration between different actors and organisations in the area. The group of students is supported by lecturers from different disciplines of Design and Social Sciences at the University and tackles the topics of Community Development and Urban Regeneration thanks to the experience of OfficineVispa's pedagogical team, which provides its many years of experience in site-specific socio-cultural work, as well as its collaborative network, its knowledge of the challenges, resources, potentials and actors in the district.
The Public Administration (the Municipality of Bolzano, the District Council and the Social Housing Institute of Alto Adige) supports and sustains the project through its specific competences and its procedural, technical and juridical knowledge.
The innovative character of the initiative is given in the first instance by the fact that an important and mainstream reality such as the University faces the suburbs of a small city like Bolzano, accepting the challenges that this implies. Another highight is the fact that a small social reality on the periphery can bring meaning and sense to the transformations of the reality in which it operates, beyond the bureaucratic terms and often cumbersome procedures of the Public Administration. The active participation of citizens, however, remains the primary source of TCC's innovative character: possibly for the first time in Bolzano, people are invited to put themselves at the forefront and to be active players in small transformations of their own district and of the reality in which they live and/or work. lastly, we would like to emphasise the birth of a true partnership network in the district, which is still current as far as the present project is concerned and which is a good example of the connection of already present and already available efforts, which only needed to be combined and brought together.
Most of the proposed projects and initiatives are replicable and scalable in other contexts (public and accessible prototypes and documentation); other peripheral contexts (and generally in a state of neglect and/or degradation) could benefit from the projects' outcomes. The workshop methodology, being articulated to prioritise co-design rather than a top-down approach, is a good example from the point of view of the possibility of benefits being applied elsewhere, with other groups and in other contexts. The learnings from the project are already at the centre of a regional debate, including several mainly non-governmental organisations, which perceive it as a good practice to be pursued.
The student teams collaborated with OfficineVispa, other local actors, citizens and employees/representatives of the municipality to develop projects that foster a convivial neighborhood and social-ecological transformations in the district. In this framework, we organized also participatory events (like "Salotto Don Bosco") to learn about concerns in don Bosco from the persons who are living and/or working there. Thereafter student teams of the Master in Eco-Social Design developed several projects in collaboration with OfficineVispa and other partners from the area. We also organized several exhibition of the projects in piazza don Bosco (the central district square) to discuss them with the partners, with people from public administration and politics, and above all with interested persons from the district. Finally, we co-create workshop formats and public interventions (all of them replicable and readapteable), which facilitate social-ecological transformations in the frame of the district.
The students discover situated, micro-potentials related to big topics such as public space, urban commons, social empowerment, food sovereignty, social housing, circular economy, biodiversity, political pedagogy and youth. Each project is site-specific and therefore tailored to the particular local context of Bolzano - don Bosco. The partnership between the University and OfficineVispa gives the students the opportunity to offer real and concrete solutions and proposals for the needs, demands and expectations of the people of the district, thanks also to the co-design of the initiatives made with the inhabitants themselves.
The project is still going on and in its current form, is now in its third year and the results (in terms of documentation, outputs, etc.) are available to new students year by year, thus creating continuity with the work already carried out. People in the neighbourhood largely recognise the project and its initiatives as valuable for their lives and the spaces they pass through and experience the most. Some of the current semester's projects by the students may be implemented and pursued during a festival that OfficineVispa is organising for the next few months.
