Material mutualisms

The chapter is about some projects developed by students during the Public Space Design Studio 2021/2022, led by professor Federica Dal Falco with PhD student Carmen Rotondi (Design Bachelor Degree course, Sapienza University of Rome). The text introduces the following projects in their materiality and shows how transferring design approaches to materials in public space design can be a proper didactic and innovation strategy that stimulates holistic thinking and applications of meaning. In fact, in the process of materializing a space's project, referring both to the surfaces (horizontal and vertical) and to the objects that populate an area, students are involved in an iterative exercise of analysis and synthesis aimed at capturing the different aspects of a context, to identify the relationships and to concretize a symbiotic composition. Therefore, the choice of materials with which to shape the project generates catalysis in the innovation process through the re-evaluation and enhancement of mutualism between the space and the broader context in which it is inserted: from the urban fabric to the nature of the place, to its history and communities; from local challenges to the broader concepts of sustainability, inclusion and accessibility; from the symbolic and semantic aspects to the languages ​​you want to communicate and the experiences you want to generate.