Design for Public Space

Overview

The Specializing Master in Design for Public Space from POLI.design - Milan (Italy) is proposed to train professionals to be able to develop projects of scenarios, processes and forms of open spaces, symbolic places in which the community can recognize itself.

We are experiencing an unprecedented moment of urban and demographic growth and cities are facing important social, economic and cultural issues. We deal with the challenge of shaping spaces that respond to new collective needs and offer multiple opportunities for use. What is nowadays required is an increasingly marked flexibility: once the character of specialized places is lost, cities are asked to adapt to an ever wider number of activities: exhibitions, spectacular events, markets, parties, political events. These are places where the private and collective dimensions have to learn somehow know how to coexist.

The designer of the Public Space operates on non-built areas such as squares, streets, parks, roundabouts and other undefined urban voids, taking into consideration both the container (the built form) and the content (the uses, even temporary). The design of Public Spaces requires a complex design approach, capable of combining different factors: from the urban configuration to its role in civil life, from existing participatory processes to the processes of use that are established. The Master offers analysis tools, scenario generation and innovative concepts; develops skills in managing processes and relationships with all the players involved; deals with project cases “in the field” in which one is confronted with real stakeholders and clients. The training activity will be based on the adoption of two observation methods, two different though complementary views: one addressed to the temporary city and the other to the contemporary city. One more interested in short-term transformations and the other in deeper changes: both, however, aimed at putting the many questions of use coming from society and its new social actors at the center of these changes.

Employment Opportunities

The program allows students to qualify to work in the private and public sector, both as freelance consultants and as integrated in complex organizations such as:

• architectural firms, engineering companies, urban infrastructure design companies
• companies operating in the production of materials, furnishings, equipment for outdoor spaces
• agencies operating in the development of strategies for communication and urban marketing
• agencies operating in the sector of cultural enhancement or organization of events
• companies operating in the redevelopment and enhancement of abandoned tertiary and commercial industrial areas
• public administrations acting as managers of public works and urban furniture
• associations and non-profit organizations that operate internationally in urban regeneration processes or in developing contexts.