Expanding Interior Design through Social Sciences

Designing a home that is not a home but would aspire to be so for a short time, answering to different andlots of cultural calls related to multi-ethnical living, are hard challenges which design could take up with humanities essential contributions. The paper would explain the first results of a research led by a multi-disciplinary group of designers, social workers and environmental psychologists. The research is focused on the quality of the Italian centres for refugees. The ephemeral nature of the settlement in the centres and the variety of identities of the tenants because of the multi-ethnical and multi-identity turn over, require tools, processes and knowledge from wide disciplinary contexts. How could design and humanities answer to the cultural diversities implied in this state of living? How could design comprehend the environmental psychological concept of place-identity [Proshansky, 1978] into temporary places? How could design, from a social condition of dis-location and displacement [Papadopoulus, 2002], offer a new location, a new place? Starting from the three main elements of living [Canter, 1974; Vitta, 2008] – bodies, spaces, objects – the study aims to explore how space’s physical qualities could enhance the cultural integration that is promoted in reception centres. The 3 places’ basic elements are expanded into a wider concept of hospitable capability, with the contribution of social and psychological sciences: bodies & privacy vs collective spaces + spaces & attachment vs temporariness + object & personalization vs standardization. This approach aims to answer to the call of places able to comprehend and opento cultural diversities that have to live together. The quality of space is not neutral in the process towards a social integration. The paper maps a wide range of case studies of hospitable and open-cultural places, in order to outline addresses for an extended interior design characterized by a humanities centred approach.