Design for Territories. Approaches and Methodologies for the Re-Production of Places

Place identity has dramatically increased its importance since the appearance of the term “strategic planning”. After the switch to the so-called Knowledge Society (Castells, 1996), culture and creativity have been the most important pillars for urban regeneration. Design approaches, competences and methodologies have a significant impact and reputation on the process of analysis, construction and re-production of places. Design is particularly able in driving those kind of interventions, focused on the valorization of tangible and intangible local peculiarities, which give shape to, highlight and connect specific territorial identities. In this paper, we are going to propose a model we want to use in order to synthetize the possible approaches design can activate for the Re-production of places. We are going to use the biological and artificial metaphors and express them according to tangible and intangible dimensions. D4T – Design for Territories, the new Research Network from the Department of Design of the Politecnico di Milano proposes the use of “territorial” as an adjective to identify activities and characteristics dealing with places, geographical areas, in connection with people. The aim of D4T is that of investigating the abovementioned pressing issues about the potentialities of design in enabling innovative processes for places. D4T is aimed at mapping, connecting and exploiting the different competencies and core skills that, within the Design Department, are dealing with the use of design strategies for regional enhancement, in light of the demands of contemporary society. In addition to that, D4T wants to increase the international network by developing connection with other researchers and research centres that work on the same issues. In our paper, we are going to present the theoretical positioning of the research network for a design-oriented Re-production of places.