Cartographic Mapping of Design Aberto P2P

Design Aberto P2P is a long-term design project that has been able to overcome issues of current design practice towards social innovation. Specifically, one of the main issues in this field of design is related to the designers being able to engage local participants, and to the long-term survival of design projects. Design Aberto P2P’s focus and main strength was participants’ engagement and being long-term.

Identifying its characteristics and dynamics will allow understanding: 1) the different forces that inform design processes; 2) how to design and lead collaborative open-ended design experiences with local communities in the urban context able to promote engaged citizenship attitude.

Its end goal is to support designers engaged in community-based design for social innovation.

In addition to this, it aims at preserving the voices and stories of its participants. In doing this, it will address a past and current issue of academic research in design and of academic knowledge: the production of general, non-situated knowledge produced by excluding from it and from the knowledge production process itself, its main protagonists.

This research project is an exploratory investigation based on an oral history approach. Data are being collected through oral history interviews conducted by the principal investigator with the designer, and the participants of this design project.

After that, a visual representation of the process will be produced. Then, through generative design workshops that will be interpreted in a collective process with the participants.