Cross-Cultural and Disciplinary Design Workshops: Sharing New Public Space Activation Approaches

Public spaces’ vitality is a theme mirroring multidisciplinary issues across contemporary cities, such as urban disrepair, loss of identity, and lack of social integration, affecting a group of sustainable development goals and, in general, urban living quality. Addressing these questions in this hyperconnected period entails reconsidering how global problems may find punctual declinations, contributing to new theories and practices supporting a new paradigmatic knowledge of design disciplines. With these auspices, in 2020, three Research Units from three European universities launched a research and didactic program assuming an on-field approach to explore innovative methods of public space activation. The initiative has adopted the formula of three itinerating intensive workshops involving 45 students and ten tutors covering multidisciplinary fields (from Architectural and Urban Design to Environmental Design) to define new kinds of design approaches stimulating both project makers and local communities. The aim is to increase the awareness of local diversity of urgencies influencing public space vitality by sharing transformative approaches from different cultural backgrounds and identifying design strategies in a collaborative environment. Coherently with its objectives, the European Commission has endorsed this programme via the Erasmus+ KA2 Action, funding teachers’ and students’ mobility and ensuring the possibility to experience cross-cultural and -disciplinary methods in person and on-site. The program is currently halfway through its implementation, with two intensive workshops successfully held in Milan and Cracow and a third one scheduled in Valencia for the fall semester of 2022/23. At this stage, evidence of strengths and weaknesses has already materialized and allows us to open a reflection on the effectiveness of a cross-cultural and disciplinary-shared workshop as an innovative pedagogic model. This paper synthesizes how the activities have been structured and performed in the first two years to formulate a preliminary assessment of the program’s results. This alternative pedagogic method allows students (coming from majors in architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture post-graduate courses) to test innovative approaches in response to local needs. By teaming up with colleagues and teachers familiar with the local environment, the participants can fasten the process of site understanding in terms of historical and current issues. At the same time, a survey on participants’ satisfaction has estimated the program’s performativity outcomes. Results initially contribute to reformulating intensive teaching modalities like workshops, providing valuable insights for future experiences.