Coltivando: making a university convivial garden

The Politecnico di Milano community garden ‘COLTIVANDO’ has been developing for over 12 months, in the Design department INDACO of Politecnico di Milano. This paper will share the process, which was taken to design this garden. The aim is for this process is to inform the creation of gardens in other places, using service design thinking combined with a spatial design approach. It will address questions such as how COLTIVANDO was made, how the garden unfolded and how the community was involved in co-design. Community centered design approach (Meroni, 2011) has been used to engage various stakeholders in the university community as well as the local Bovisa (Suburb of northern Milan) neighbourhood. The ‘Coltivando’ research group is working alongside a diverse array of stakeholders in the university, business, government and civil society. The garden project has been co-designed considering topics such as service model, governance model, education and programming model, spatial design. The service model of the garden is based on ‘food coop’, which is a collaborative model about sharing responsibilities amongst the group. A project like COLTIVANDO coupled with service design models helps to address the gap between knowing the problem of unsustainability and find solutions for individuals, sustainable design practitioners, communities and government through sustainable everyday design thinking and implementation. This is an experiment of collaboration between service and spatial design to merge diverse members of the community, who live in the same place.