For the second semester of 2024, 11 teams of students of the Master in Eco-Social Design collaborated with partners to develop “real world” transformative design projects. The partners (NGOs, associations, coops, public institutions, citizen initiatives, etc) were invited to contribute with a specific issue, challenge or topic, which served as starting points for the students to develop answers, solutions, but also to raise new questions. Eleven projects were developed, each one exploring a specific topic and with its own perspective. Big thanks to the partners: BASIS Vinschgau Venosta, Blufink, Comune di Bolzano Settore Donna, Comune di Stelvio, Climate Action South Tyrol, South Tyrol Music Festivals, COOLTour, Foundation Haydn, OfficineVispa, Politermica, Regreening Rentsh, Wiesl.
The projects will be presented at GOG (Gäste Ospiti Guests)
Faculty for Design and Art, 4th floor.
Opening: Friday, 14 June 2024, 18:00 – 21:00
Visits: Saturday, 15 June 2024, 11:00 – 17:00
The devil has smuggled the wrong dates into our newsletter. We apologise for this.
Workshops
Friday h19.30 + Saturday h15.00 workshop from project “Sinfonie Comuni” — C4 corridor
The workshop will break down the barriers that separate the stage from the audience, making spectators the real protagonists of music. No musical instruments or previous musical knowledge are needed, your body and your voice can work as instruments. You just need to participate and have fun!
Saturday h12.00-13.00 workshop from project “Room 22” — room F4.01
“When We Care”: An engaging and interactive workshop where we will introduce three unique “care tools” – Exchange Circle, Art of Care, and Tower of Care- with the aim to facilitate interaction and empathy.
Saturady h13.00-14.00 workshop from “Third Place for Gries” — C4 corridor
Let’s think about your ideal open space where you have the feeling of belonging, have the opportunity to shape it and interact with others! Join us to play “your own third space” and let’s create it.
Saturday h 14.00-16.00 workshop “Fermenting and Cooking” – project “Rundherum” – room C4.06
The workshop is about “Fermenting and Cooking”. We invite an expert on this field, Dr. Ali Zein Alabiden Tlais, who is talking about the variety of fermented food. He will mention tools for making traditional as well as innovative in foods and beverages. In the beginning we will have a small lecture about the different kinds of fermentation methods, after this we are going to try out to make a dish or food on our own.
Gstōlt
What creature do you dream of? Creatures invite us to enter into mysterious and unknown realms with courage and curiosity. Creatures swim, float, fly and burrow between the loved and the lonely. They inhabit the space between. Our intention here is toinvite you to disturb and reimagine the space between boundaries. We invite you to deliberately disrupt a social rule.How do you speak about grief? Where is the fear in your life right now? What has happened on this land in the last 85 years? In this space of disruption, we invite you to weave with us: to imagine a creature and construct a shared reality with courage and curiosity.
Participants: Filippo Ciriani, Cedar Schimke, Charlie Maybe, Jonas Vogt
Partner: BASIS Vinschgau Venosta
Third Place for Gries
Where in the city do you go to meet with others outside of your home, school or workplace? A third place is defined as such. But can you find one in your neighbourhood? How is the interaction you take part in there? And most importantly, how to co-design a third place with the community? Our proposal took the challenge of having a community open space that is not fixed, able to move around the city and accommodated to what people need.
Participants: Jens Mayer, Carolina Reisinger, Monica Ramos
Partner: Blufink
Farsi spazio
Farsi spazio originates from a collaboration with Officine Vispa. Through body explorations and interactions with a newly acquired space, the project aimed to research themes of welcoming and belonging within a community, as well as to bring the space to life. During two workshops, we encouraged participants to open up and share their feelings to create a shared language. To finalize the project, we co-wrote a common glossary that highlights values and meanings important to the community, and developed a prototype of a floor game that guides users throughout their journey in this new space.
Participants: Chiara Belpassi, Angela Bonan, Lalehan Kahyaoglu
Partner: Officine Vispa
Rundherum
RUNDHERUM – nomadic gardening school is an interdisciplinary learning environment that moves all around the area of Bolzano. Our goal for this project is to invite people to learn about what an individual can do to achieve a conscious way of living. That means practically organizing hands-on workshops connected to food waste, fermentation, soil etc. all in the sense of adapting to the topic of climate change.
Participants: Iris Eberhardt, Antonia Krebs, Silvia Rafanelli
Ask Groovy
Ask Groovy is a research project presented through a digital website, aiming to gather data and practices related to sustainability in music festivals. It provides festival organizers with recommendations for making their events more environmentally friendly. The project collects data through a survey system, which is then aggregated to support collective requests to institutions like municipalities. Additionally, sustainability practices are compiled in a blog, offering valuable insights that music festival organizers can use to enhance the sustainability of their events.
Participants: Maximilian Stahl, Matteo Antonazzo, Remadi Salma
Partners: South Tyrol Music Festival, Climate Action South Tyrol
da grigio a verde — von grau zu grün
Bolzano is experiencing increasingly hot summers. Climate change means that heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense. The project ‘Regreening Bolzano’ plans to transform the two asphalt areas at the Premstallerhof into a ‘green oasis’ with more trees and greenery, thereby improving urban biodiversity, social interaction, and the general quality of life in the city. ‘Da grigio a verde – From grey to green’ focuses on the social aspects of the redesign, recognizing the importance of involving residents, Premstallerhof associations, and park users. The project’s work includes analysing and understanding how people use the space, identifying needs and constraints, and creating tools that support people in collaboratively developing visions for the space to make Bolzano greener and more liveable together.
Participants: Mirjam Bauer, Michela De Paoli, Tania Leontyuk, Simon Wallis
Partner: Regreening Bolzano
ROOM 22
ROOM 22: Reimagining Our Opportunities Matriarchal, aims to develop a series of creative workshops in collaboration with WE Space in Piazza Domenicani 22. The goal of the final workshop “When We Care” , is to engage participants across generations through activities that emphasise future thinking, co-creation, and empowerment. Through these collaborative workshops, we introduced innovative care tools—Exchange Circle, Art of Care, and Tower of Care—to facilitate interaction and empathy. These efforts aim to transform WE Space into a vibrant hub for collective care and community engagement, continually refined through participant feedback and future collaborations.
Participants: Ayşe Asena Bacaksız, Michelle Muratori
Partner: WE_ Women Empowerment Point
Sinfonie Comuni
Music is a collective process, uniting places and people. With Sinfonie Comuni every citizen can contribute to bringing the urban landscape to life, collaborating in the creation of a large city orchestra. The project strives to break down the barriers that separate the stage from the audience, making spectators the real protagonists of music and including every segment of the population, to open the doors of theatres to everyone. Music is therefore our means of fostering encounters and cultural exchanges, while giving a new perspective on theatre and orchestra. Our aim is to bring music as much as possible into public spaces, through a play-installation that becomes an opportunity for everyone to come and play music together. No musical instruments or previous musical knowledge are needed, your body and your voice can work as instruments. You just need to participate and have fun!
Participants: Emma Cocco, Giorgia Baccichetti
Partner: Fondazione Haydn
Camaleonte
Camaleonte is a space where teenagers and young adults can realize their individual projects as well as organize activities together. Furthermore, the space gives the opportunity for local artists to show their artworks. This space is being newly opened by Cooltour, a youth centre in Bolzano. In a participatory design process, our team held several workshops together with the young adults, in which we developed the spatial concept together. Followed by a collaborative realization of the project. The space is named “Camaleonte”, as it was designed to adapt perfectly to the needs of young people and also serve as exhibition space by local artists, which are also a main target group of Camaleonte. The space is designed in such a way that it can be easily adapted to suit different requirements. In additon, an acoustic wool installation was created together with the young adults through a participatory knitting process.
Participants: Anna Lienbacher, Miriam Pardeller
Partner: Cooltour
Mobili Mobili
Project description (max. 150 words): The MOBILI MOBILI project revitalizes an unused warehouse in Bolzano, part of the PoliTermica cooperative, transforming it into a valuable community resource. We launched a furniture and object rental service to provide basic necessities to low-income individuals, particularly students. This initiative enhances the cooperative’s financial stability and offers a cost-effective alternative for consumers, while creating at least two jobs for individuals in vulnerable conditions. Beyond creating the rental system, we designed and provided our partner with essential tools for future sustainability. Given the frequently changing staff, we developed resources to ensure smooth operations: rental service guidelines, restoration workshop guidelines, labels made from scrap materials containing the contract and a mobile passport, a tool to highlight and narrate the object’s history. By promoting furniture rental over purchasing new items, the project reduces waste, supports the circular economy, cultivates community responsibility, educates on conscious consumerism, and encourages social interaction and mutual support.
Participants: Carlotta Gambino, Alessia Formica, Barbara Koniecka
Partner: PoliTermica
Stilzerisch
Project description (max. 150 words): In the quaint mountain village of Stelvio, a remarkable project named Stilzerisch began. This initiative was created by three dedicated students, María Palacios Armesto, Reyhan Khodaie, and Roberta Bertók. Stilzerisch is part of a larger effort called “Stelvio – Narratives about Resilience,” supported by the Italian Ministry of Culture and the PNRR. This broader project aims to enhance the village’s resilience and promote socio-ecological transformation across various sectors, including housing, mobility, landscape, agriculture, crafts, culture, and tourism. The key challenge for the Stilzerisch project was to define Stelvio’s identity and make it tangible through experiences and narratives. Debranding is the lens through which we see, present and experience the process. Together, we created a sensory journey that runs through Stilz’s past, present, and future, showcasing the village’s unique charm and resilience to the world.
Participants: Reyhane Khodaie, María Palacios Armesto, Roberta Bertok
Partner: Stelvio