Temporary and Narrative Design. Approaches for Fragile Urban Contexts

The design of places able to perform the needs of citizens and users of a territory and, at the same time, able to know how to express the values and potentials of the same territory, requires specific tools and processes for fragile urban contexts, at the margins, where discomfort and conflict are present. Cultural, professional and political debate around the regeneration of such contexts, often defined as urban suburbs, is crucial in Italy, as well as internationally and at European level. This paper intends to highlight a shared approach by some project actions, focusing in particular on the impact they generate in the short and medium time limit. Starting from two different film products assonance, it focuses on two possible models of design-driven intervention, supporting case studies of research and projects carried out in collaboration between universities and local or institutional actors. Case studies testify the effectiveness of urban space design models, here called Promo and Corti – Trailers and Short films - to enter into complex contexts, enhancing their identities and socio-cultural peculiarities thanks to a "narrative" attitude, in triggering processes of redevelopment and spontaneous reappropriation, with actions that listen to the territory and involve it in retraining processes. The two approaches are overlapping and complementary, both of relevant importance in the urban regeneration project and in the redemption of its more marginal areas where imagery and imagination converge in the same space of hope.