Spazio Conposto - More than a kitchen, more than a garden.
Spazio Conposto is a physical and immaterial space where multiple social dimensions can join. It is a push for the local population to meet and trigger regenerative processes for creating a new sense of community. Food permeates the new reality, where positive contamination of distant generations connects the historical heritage and local traditions to contemporary elements. Citizens can shape the future life of the city, starting by celebrating diversity and healthy and sustainable lifestyles.
Local
Italy
Grugliasco, in the province of Turin (Italy).
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
As an individual in partnership with other persons
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Spazio Conposto is designed for a small town in the province of Turin to bring together two currently distant generations, students of the University of Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences, and the elderly, enhancing intergenerational bonds. Through practical actions of rethinking and redesigning public spaces, the two generations can meet and collaborate, strengthening the sense of community and belonging to a marginal place in the suburb of Grugliasco (TO). The project consists of two spaces, the Urban Gardens ("Spazio Orti") and the Kitchen Space ("Spazio Cucina") in Città Universitaria della Conciliazione, where food becomes an opportunity for encounters. So, food is the link between the two spaces where elderly and young people exchange knowledge and work together to manage the two places. Spazio Orti, consisting of small lots of land, is dedicated to practical work, cultivating the land, experimenting, and bringing together agricultural and university knowledge. Spazio Cucina is a room equipped with furniture and professional tools, which allows the community to cook and consume food. Thus, food is addressed in many aspects: from on-site production to the preparation of dishes; to the final management of organic waste. Spazio Conposto could become a meeting point where involved people can freely spend time and experience new methods of doing individual things with others, like co-cooking and co-creating. There are no limits to culture, abilities, or time to allow people to move into the spaces with freedom so that energy and diversity could mark out the entire local area, for now much more listless. The project is a physical landmark for the suburb of Grugliasco and a dynamic reality where material, immaterial, and food flows animate the space and welcome new relationships.
SENSE OF COMMUNITY
SHARED RESPONSIBILITY
FOOD AWARENESS
INTER-GENERATIONAL BOND
LOCAL REGENERATION
Spazio Conposto has the ambitious goal of being a balanced proposal project ready to become real, following the three dimensions of Sustainability (Social, Environmental, and Economic).
Social Sustainability: the concept prefers a sense of community instead of individuality to foster inclusion and cultural growth of the entire area.
Spazio Conposto embraces the local need to get out of a state of isolation and social fragility in which, especially the elderly of the community and those who temporarily inhabit the area (i.e. resident students of the University Campus), live.
Spazio Conposto pays attention to the resources already available within the territory; hence, recovering underused common spaces is the best solution to introduce the citizens to a re-appropriation and valorization process of land and buildings already existing.
Environmental Sustainability: the preservation of the environment is part of the process and purpose of the concept.
The choice of using existing resources and innovative furniture and objects is a responsible decision, also for the environment.
Reconnecting with nature is a means of the concept so that people can bond by cultivating food collectively with traditional agricultural techniques and new methods. Conjointly in the kitchen, people can experience sustainable community ways to select, cook and eat food. Spazio Conposto aims to educate care and awareness of the land, the food and in its end-of-life phase. It could become a model for citizens who replicate learned practices at home and turn the best ones into habits.
Economic Sustainability: the project considers two relevant issues: quality and cost. The purpose is to offer citizens a correct service, where proposing less but better guarantees an accessible service for the local population. There are different types of subscriptions to the spaces so that most citizens can join the community, and Spazio Conposto registers positive incomes to provide proper management.
The most expressive aesthetic features concern the Kitchen Space, a welcoming and familiar room. There the design embraces simple and linear lines to express a sense of warmth, functionality, tidiness and joyful spirit. The furniture is mainly composed of removable elements in natural materials, like wood and iron, to guarantee hygienical standards; however, the finishing of the metal surfaces is coloured and emphasized by some other funny components to avoid the coldness of the material.
A huge equipped cupboard ("Strumentario") shows inner dishes and appliances thanks to a translucent door that encourages people to try professional tools.
The kitchen stands out for the bench "panca Conposta"; its design is custom-made for the specific needs of the place. The material choice follows each function, so light pine wood composes the top of the bench to give comfort, while the legs and the step are in metal to support high weights; the containers support the structure and declare their contents thanks to a transparent plastic with colour brightness. The stylized patterns on the covers of the bench communicate the presence of objects inside it, where there are stools, board games and other tableware, that increase the usability and the flexibility of the space for both a child and adult audience. The bench has five mobile elements, three seatbacks and two tables, which can be moved and screwed into different points of the structure. Those elements, the shape of the bench, and the spatial composition allow people to customize the place and perform various activities, encouraging conversation between those sitting at the table and those who cook.
Finally, the movable green wall brings nature indoors, inviting people to cultivate plants in greenhouses.
Four colours describe the vital place: orange-red for Spazio Cucina, green for Spazio Orti, yellow for the young, and purple for the elderly. People can declare to be part of the community by wearing bags and pins.
The concept behind Spazio Conposto aims to fill in the absence in the territory of a place for all. Different public spaces in the suburb of Grugliasco, born with an inclusive intent, have become islands over time, neighbouring entities without connections. Hence, the first intent is therefore to create an accessible space where students, working adults, the elderly, and parents with children can participate and rebuild together a sense of community.
It starts from the design of specific activities studied to enhance local and non-local know-how, especially linked with nutrition and food. Here the academic knowledge of young people, rich in intercultural culinary novelties, is mixed with the elderly's practical one. Therefore, citizens participate in monthly laboratory activities and themed days in the Kitchen Space. Urban Gardens arranges seasonal activities and training opportunities for the subscribers, who participate actively in the team works performing different roles every month.
Even in the physical dimension, the kitchen design follows the rules of accessibility: the open space and the spatial arrangement of the furniture facilitate aggregation and dialogue, as well as the freedom of movement of people. The draw of the furnishings is ad hoc to meet multiple needs. Among these, the bench is the main element: centrally arranged, it has large dimensions that facilitate free and flexible uses and encourage people to live moments in the community.
From an economic point of view, the partnership with the Municipality helps offer an affordable service to all through different subscriptions.
Finally, the internal communication and the promotion of Spazio Conposto also consider the difference between how the elderly and young exchange and acquire information. So, to get in touch with everyone,
internal communication is by sms, and promotional communication combines a more sober language with a young one, as well as the use of analogue and digital media.
The spaces, the furniture, the activities, and the dynamics of Spazio Conposto meet the needs and demands of the target citizens who live in the area, mainly elderlies and students. Consequently, there are different types of passes to which the user can choose to subscribe to involve as many people as possible and allow them to use the space in diversified ways. The subscriptions differ mainly in their validity, the access to the kitchen area or the urban gardens, and the possibility of using the spaces entirely or only partially.
Therefore it's possible to outline the degree level of involvement of members based on the subscription types that determine different ways and times of experiencing Spazio Conposto. The first level concerns users who occasionally attend Spazio Conposto, for example, to eat during lunch, study or take shelter in an indoor place, even for a few hours. In this case, the user can not exploit the entire kitchen but only a few appliances and furniture, such as the coffee machine and microwave, and the chairs and tables in the room. The involvement is purely spatial; the person should live responsibly in the space from a perspective of physical sharing and usability of the objects, respecting the shared objects.
The second level of involvement concerns the full subscription, thanks to which the citizen can use all the material available at any time of the day, participate in the scheduled activities and lessons and propose others. The involvement here is not only spatial, but the user is responsible for maintenance and oversight of the entire space. He is in charge of directly collaborating with the managers of Spazio Conposto for a continuous improvement of the service.
Much more is the involvement, superior is the positive impact and success of Spazio Conposto; in fact, not only the economic livelihood of the project depends on this, but above all, the achievement of the highest goal of Spazio Composto, that is the creation of a community.
Throughout the concept design phase, mapping a network of potential actors, their roles, and their power within the project was fundamental. The stakeholders are all at a local and regional level. After identifying the potential actors, we developed three power-interest matrices based on three previously set objectives:
1) the encounter of different users living in the area;
2) valorization of the resources already present in the area;
3) offering a new service for future incoming university flows.
The matrices graphically highlighted the key stakeholders, characterized by a high degree of interest and power. They are potential project partners. The key stakeholders are mainly public ones, such as the University of Turin and, in particular, its internal departments dedicated to the issue of food; and the Municipality of Grugliasco. Among private entities, Le Serre Cultural Park (heading other associations in the area) and the Sanpaolo Foundation stand out. The University of Turin is an important partner especially considering the future creation of a new university pole that involves a complex of buildings hosting various departments in the scientific field. With this project, the university increases its territorial involvement, seeing the significant number of students expected once the construction of the new pole ends. The students will significantly contribute to Spazio Composto by sharing knowledge and actively participating in the project. Students are the largest community able to determine the success or failure of the concept. The Municipality and Le Serre Cultural Park are two fundamental interlocutors for accessing the urban planning foreseen by the project for the availability of public spaces managed by them. Finally, the Sanpaolo Foundation is crucial for the economic contribution it could make. Spazio Conposto is in line with the objectives of the Foundation, which combine the promotion of the local territories and youth entrepreneurship.
The concept is an expression of technical-productive, social and economic research. Initially, the study of these three different aspects occurs in parallel; identifying a single idea gave rise to the design phase, characterized by a multidisciplinary approach. The methodology applied to the project belongs to Sociology and Economic Management subject, whose knowledge merged with the Innovation Design discipline. Territorial planning needs to start from a clear state of the art of the context within which the concept wants to fit. For this, it was necessary to make a sociological and historical investigation of the present, the past, and the future planning of the place. All the information collected and deeply analyzed during the research converged into a SWOT that highlights strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and describes the geographical area. Different needs were brought to light and expressed in the absence of common reference points for all the citizens living in the suburb of Grugliasco. Thus the concept of Spazio Conposto was born.
In the planning phase, the economic tools were essential to shape and validate each concept element; in particular, the Benchmarking Analysis is the tool to evaluate the project feasibility and insert it into the real world. To better manage the total scope of the project, the WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) is structured using a top-down approach: each defined phase was broken down into Work Packages to obtain greater project management detail. In addition, for designing the Kitchen Space, the Product Design discipline plays a crucial role in studying materials and shapes. The design of objects complies with the formula "The form follows the function".
The union of different disciplines can be identified not so much in one or more components of the project but in the result as a whole, which takes into account the complexity of the territory in terms of spaces, resources, and people.
Spazio Conposto differs from community spaces (such as co-working and co-kitchen) for the targets who intend to engage. The concept was born from the study of the local population, where the high number of elderly and the growing number of university students gave rise to the desire to put these two users at the centre of the project. So, the leading innovative character is to create a place where the elderly and the young are co-protagonists in a communal space where the two subjects act synergistically and on an equal footing. The format guarantees that the relationships established between all the members are without formalism so that everyone is at ease in the space by building a second home for the entire community. So the difference with other similar places is the quality of the relationships, here more constant and solid.
Food is explored all around: from self-production to cooking to end-of-life management, food represents physical and social material for meetings. Unlike other co-kitchens, Spazio Conposto offers a complete experience where tradition meets new technologies. So the self-production of food takes place both on the ground and in hydroponic and aeroponic greenhouses following the seasonality; thus, in the cooking phase, users can choose between traditional tools of Italian culture (a rolling pin, pasta maker) and those linked to international culinary cultures (steamer and tajine). The focus on food is more in-depth analyzed through shared training sessions and virtuous collective management actions, like organic composting.
Finally, contrary to the private interests of profit organizations of co-spaces, Spazio Conposto aims to maintain the social goal of inclusion, even with an economic profit. It desires to create a continuous dialogue with the municipal body and create a hybrid business model over public and private to broaden the future range of people who use public places, making accessible those underused by the local population.
Spazio Conposto could be entirely replicable in all situations similar to the one described by the concept; the project photographs most of the small cities that live in isolated conditions compared to the big cities and where the elderly community tends to be bigger than the younger ones. Therefore, the model of living that Spazio Conposto proposes could be transferred in all those places where there are suburban situations, where the rural area is still close to the inhabited one, and where a heterogeneous population live without opportunities to assemble.
So the combination of the indoor space (Spazio Cucina) with the outdoor garden (Spazio Orti), the cooperative styles of the entire organization, and the scheduled activities aimed at sharing and meeting are all replicable characteristics.
The design of furnishings in the kitchen made them transferable too: the study of this space consists of flexible pieces of furniture, and each component is independent of the others: all objects work well together, but they are not necessarily dependent so that, in accordance to space requirements, it is possible to reduce or customize the elements of the furniture. The multiple functions of each component allow for exploitation in different contexts. For example, even if the bench is designed ad hoc for Spazio Conposto in Grugliasco, it works well in any place dedicated to the community, like a canteen or a study room, thanks also to the movable elements composing it.
The methodology used could be repeated endlessly in different contexts and territories. Sociology, Economic Management, and Innovation Design disciplines help designers to face complex scenarios and find efficient solutions to improve any environment or situation; an in-depth territorial analysis, the study of personas and their needs, economic evaluations, the study of shapes and materials are just some of the fundamental methods in designing for all.
The Spazio Conposto concept addresses several issues in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The project with a territorial vocation mainly incorporates 2 of the 17 objectives recognized by the ONU.
The area of interest constitutes the outer belt of the inhabited centre of Grugliasco, little served by public services for mobility and sociality, and near both Turin and the neighbouring Collegno city. Although it is close to the Regional County Seats of Piedmont, the marginal position of the suburb of Grugliasco places the citizens in an isolated position; this uncomfortable condition has accentuated over the years the lack of an identity of its own, the challenge from which Spazio Conposto was born. Urban regeneration and the return of public places to all citizens aim to create local value through an attractive centre where different users can meet and thus characterize the area. This challenge approaches the themes addressed by Objective 11: "Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable".
Spazio Conposto also deals with the issue of food, from production to consumption to end of life. In a context where citizens are increasingly less aware of what they consume in terms of quality and origin of raw materials, and young people consume increasingly ready meals, the project appears as a sensitizer of best practices. Spazio Composto promotes local self-production of healthy products from the land and directly cooked in the Spazio Cucina; the traditional culinary knowledge of the elderly target involved in the project stimulates young people to experience mealtimes differently through planned activities. Finally, exploiting local spaces promotes the conscious involvement of citizens in choosing healthy consumption and sustainable lifestyles involving sustainable public procurement, in line with Objective 12: "Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns".
