Sustainable Social Innovation Practices Supporting Communities in Place-Based Innovations. The Case of an Intergenerational Community Care Center.

In this paper, social innovation contributes to a bottom-up approach to designing an inclusive and intergenerational community centre. The co-design process involved designers, care professionals, care managers, representatives of local organizations, caregivers, and students from the Design School of name-removed, 1Y Master level Course in Interior Design. This participatory co- design experience allowed participants to confront social issues, cross disciplinary boundaries, and experiment with problem-solving skills by collaborating with an interdisciplinary team of researchers, designers, and medical experts, developing sustainable collaborative practices. This process has generated two outputs: (1) a shared framework to support a more sustainable and practical knowledge development to define and design the community centre, (2) a design project co- developed with the community that will attend and live the centre. In particular, the community centre is a model for intergenerational care which incorporates learning and recreational environments for children of different ages, including those with physical or mental disabilities, as well as health consulting spaces and recreational spaces for elderlies, including those with dementia or cognitive impairments. The interiors are designed for intergenerational use so that younger generations and elderlies will be encouraged to interact.