Design for Collaborative Cities (DxCC) – DESIS Thematic Cluster

City making and design

   The world is changing fast. And cities are changing even faster. In this turbulent context, traditional urban planning has been progressively accompanied by more flexible processes: city making projects thanks to which different parts of the cities are conceived and implemented, considering both physical and social dimensions.

What can design do to trigger and support them? How can design leverage social innovation to guide them towards resilient, sustainable and collaborative cities?

Read more on Collaborative cities. Social innovation and design for a regenerative city making. Introductory notes.

Design for Collaborative Cities (DxCC)

    DxCC is a design research program, self-organized by DESIS Network, which involves several design schools around the world that work at the crossroads of city making, social innovation and design. More precisely, it is a group of projects (called: Thematic Cluster – TC), which adopt similar hypotheses of work, exchange experiences and aim to produce an open and shareable design knowledge.

The program is conceived as a series of local projects developed in parallel by different DESIS Labs and a series of DxCC events (conferences, seminars, workshops), with different focuses and different formats, organised in different places. Local projects and DxCC events interact with each other, feeding each other with experiences and reflections.

The DxCC has a duration of 3 years, between January 2018 and December 2020.

(If you are interested, please get in touch with the DESIS Coordination: desis.coordination@gmail.com).

 Local projects

The DxCC initial group of DESIS Labs includes the DESIS Labs of Elisava (Barcelona), Tongji (Shanghai), Politecnico (Milan), CSM (London), Luca (Genk), Parsons (NYC), UFRJ (Rio), Medea ( Malmo) and some DESIS * partners, such as SDS and Pantopicon and SIX.

To this initial group, over time, other DESIS Labs have been added (the complete list is in progress).

* DESIS partners are design groups that are not based in design schools, but are interested in the same theme the Cluster is working on and agree to collaborate by adopting the same approach in terms of openness in the process and results……..

 DxCC events

  • 2nd April 2018, DXCC/0 Kick off meeting in Elisava Barcelona
  • 28th October 2018, DxCC/1 Design for Collaborative Cities Conference, co-organized with the Tongji University, in Shanghai, as a pre-Cumulus event
  • 15th May 2019, DxCC/2 Design Tools for Collaborative Cities Making, workshop co-organized with the EU Policy Lab, in Brussels.
  • 29th May 2019, third DxCC/3 Campus&City. Students and teachers in the neighbourhood community. Forum organized in the framework of the Cumulus Conference in Rovaniemi (Finland)

(In program)