Design and new strategies for spaces

Research focus

The Peer review has evaluated this group as Good

The sub-unit intends to promote research and experimental actions in the following thematic areas: hospitality spaces, retail, knowledge; new ways of living spaces; urban exhibitions; event design. The complex economic and social transformation which has struck many territorial areas of the industrialized countries at the end of the second millennium explains the current need to control, convert, develop, design and administrate a territory. Such needs increase the potentials and relevance of the design approach to this issue. The cultural, analytical (process), economic, creative, and operational components – which characterize the training and profession of a designer – can be conveniently applied to the definition of complex and articulated programming aspects for space development. The interdisciplinary character of design and the ability of designers to undertake a wide range of competencies, allows them to bring into action the complex relations needed to generate the new value of spaces. The reference scenarios A famous line of the poem The swan by Baudelaire says: “The form of the city changes more rapidly than the mortal soul”. This is exactly what is happening under our eyes over the last years. Big metropolis such as Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, Lisbon, as well as some centres such as Bilbao, Glasgow, Lion (to give some examples), are undergoing a mighty transformation process. As Giandomenico Amendola, urban sociology expert, reminds us: “ Beauty, variety, centrality, availability, safety are considered attributes that cannot be given up. Practically all cities intend to increase their aesthetic and productive potentials. To recover the seashore, to fill the areas abandoned by industries and deposits with lights and attractions, to implement the value of monuments and places able to tell an intelligible story, to fill the night with life and the day with events: these are constant voices in the agenda of the contemporary city.” This process highlights the fact that change is ever-more related to the ways a city and its public spaces are used, in connection to a growing consumption demand. In order to be “consumed”, the city, as any other product, needs new impulses, new ideas: tourism, culture, fun, are the core of the “new city”. The urban planning discipline, which has tried to handle the city transformations in the previous decades, is substituted by urban design, which is more effective in supporting modern (public or private) strategies of territorial development. The example of Glasgow is meaningful: the city was struck by a mighty crisis, due to the exhaustion of its industrial tradition. However, at the end of the 80es, the city has found a new role and a new development, thanks to an incessant promotional and cultural activity, with the slogan “Glasgow is miles better”. After being nominated “European cultural capital” in 1990, Glasgow has become a model all over Europe. In this context, the Sub-unit 1 operates to: - promote study and research activity, carried out independently, with the aim of contributing to the definition of a sort of disciplinary statute of “space design”, to be collected in publications at various levels (texts, articles, etc.); - carry out research, consultancy and programming activities for third parties in the field of territorial marketing, of temporary exhibition design, urban design, programming urban transformation activities, design and improvement of territorial transformations (tourist, industrial, tertiary sector etc.); - to support, with targeted and co-ordinated interventions, the different levels of didactic activity, from the institutional activity to the PhD; - promote public activities of comparison and debate inside and outside the university field; - promote didactic initiatives on these topics, in the field of permanent training (refresher courses, masters etc.); - activate a network of relations, at national and international level, finalized at creating a permanent level of exchange. The main interlocutors of such actions are: Peer Review - Department of Industrial Design, Arts, Communication and Fashion (INDACO) 139 - public bodies at different levels (municipal, provincial and regional governments); - public interest bodies (Chamber of Commerce, tourist agencies, Urban Centre Milan etc.); - trade associations operating in the field of tourist promotion of the territory; - enterprises operating in the exhibition set up and urban design field.

Dipartimento di afferenza

Dipartimento di Industrial Design, Arti, Comunicazione e Moda (INDACO)

Docenti afferenti

Full Professors
Pierluigi Nicolin
Luisa Collina
Associate Professors
Giampiero Bosoni
Luciano Crespi
Ida Farè
Assistant Professors
Valeria Iannilli
Giovanna Piccinno
Giacomo Rizzi
Francesco Scullica
Gabriella Zuco