Design, system, territory: a multidisciplinary didactic activity to enhance places

The competition between territories, the goal to attract people and investments, the capacity to prefigure local sustainable development represent new opportunities to reflect about design theories and practices. Defining a "portrait" of an area, visualizing the specific features, enhancing the different levels of territorial resources are actions related to the refinement of design methods and practices. These activities are developed through a discussion and a synergy with other disciplines and also through the ability to build relationships and coordinating actions between different local stakeholders. The design for territories also represents an integrated approach into the design discipline: strategic design and services design to build scenarios, to propose design visions of local development using some themes of sensemaking such as the brand as collector of a coordinated system of the territorial offer. In 2008, Poli.Design (consortium of Politecnico di Milano) has promoted an advanced training course "Brand for the Territorial Systems" on these themes. The multidisciplinary approach and the design practice in real contexts are the main characteristics of the didactic model. In the first two editions, these methods have been applied in two Italian contexts: the territory of Ostuni and San Pellegrino Terme. This is an original didactic approach that regards different aspects: - the focus on design for the exploitation of the territorial resources (territorial capital) as the main theme of the projects; - the application of the multidisciplinary theoretical tools in real contexts (field activities). The results are related to different levels: - a training of a complex professional profile able to interact with business and institutional environments and also with the main competencies acting in local contexts; - the learning of conceptual and operational capabilities that integrate strategic vision and the ability to manage projects in term of product-system design (services, communications, products).