by Francesca Rizzo (1) The Chongming Sustainable Community project aims to to improve the living conditions in the Chongming countryside community and to promote its sustainable development. Considering that Chongming is an island of farms and woods very close to Shanghai, the project main strategy is to promote a set of initiatives, both in Chongming [...]

Design leadership (the very project initiative and its promotion is leaded by the design team…) The Chongming sustainable community project is a design driven project. It comes from the vision of sustainability, the insight of the present context and the understanding of the particularity of the area. It is a sustainable community project based on [...]

Investigating (the exploration and mapping of existing local social initiatives oriented toward the inspiration of new solutions or systems of solutions…) Chong Ming project has activated a strong field immersion phase with the aim to: -    discover, analyze and visualize/communicate the territorial capital (natural, artificial, social) and its potentialities in terms of revitalization of the [...]

Facilitating (the tools from participative design are used to support interaction and convergence between the parties involved…) The mutual understanding of stakeholders is something that really oriented the direction of the project.  And it has been one of its main difficulties. In fact most of the village island residents are less educated elder and women, [...]

Envisioning (scenario, proposals, simulation and rapid prototyping are used to stimulate and orientate the design partners  and stakeholders in the design process). The aim of this area is to create a set of sustainable design solutions for the transition between rural Chong Ming communities and urban Shanghai communities this can be achieved by the design [...]

Systemizing (activities oriented towards organising synergies and multiplication effects between the different single projects of elements of the project…) This design action was about linking design solutions in a local system, creating mutual connection and relating them to the external environment. Here the design role has been to organize the project services network. This meant [...]

Enabling (digital platforms, toolkits and other supporting tools are used to enable the local players to act by themselves) To make stakeholder independent in their activities design also conceived the digital platform of the project by the means of which to interact with different services dedicated both to the people from urban area who want [...]

Communicating (illustrated presentations, clear mapping, appealing visuals are used to explain and disseminate the project…) Another activity that design performed in the project has been the elaboration of the communication strategy and channels to make the project visible. This first required the elaboration of the project identity and brand and the implementation of different tools [...]