Conference Agenda

Designing for social innovation in urban context prompts a re-evaluation of urban sociability (dos Santos et al., 2021). This contribution delves into the outcomes of a living lab initiative that tackled the growing prevalence of urban manufacturing (Fasoli & Tassinari, 2017) in Rome's landscape.

Eight laboratories have been engaged in a co-design experiment, through a systemic approach guided by a hyper-local tool offering an exemplary case study of how Design can effectively foster community building and introduce novel urban production models (Rietveld, 022). This network encompasses a blend of services, technologies, and skills, aligning with the principles of the 15-minute city (Manzini, 2021) ultimately encouraging both technological and social innovations.

While the findings show how Design can advocate for sustainable urban development and vibrant neighbourhoods, the insights, derived by the systemic approach applied, hold value for policymakers, urban planners, and other decision-makers, reflecting the potential for empowered citizenship.

Vulnerable communities often lack of basic housing and facilities. However, with more understanding, they not only face housing problem but also with social, economic, environmental, political issues and so on. Traditional building approach often focuses on material needs while the underlying causes could be neglected. In fact, vulnerability is often more in the intangibles: relationships with self, others and environment. With this regard, how could designers develop efficient systemic design strategies responding to the complexity of social systems and empower vulnerable groups to recognize themselves as interrelated actors in community development?

Asset based design approach under the community capital framework is an alternative method that possible to provide us with a systemic perspective in community development. In this study, asset based approach is adopted under a systemic perspective for architectural design and construction in Iraq Bersive 2 refugee camp as participatory action research to evaluate the social and material outcome.

Black Swans have become the norm rather than the exception. These unimaginable events with massive consequences seem to be a by-product of our society ruled by complex systems. As more Black Swans are looming, an interest in becoming more resilient is rising. However, achieving resilience against Black Swans remains an ambiguous endeavour. Looking into academic literature, “wargaming” Black Swans is often proposed as an antidote since it explores decision-making in an adversarial and unimaginable context. However, how these Black Swan-focused wargames can take shape is unclear. In response, this paper proposes a design of a wargame addressing systemic resilience in the face of looming Black Swans consisting of four modules. The paper presents the iterative design process based on four playtesting workshops with 52 researchers and practitioners in design, crisis management, aviation, healthcare, and serious gaming. The paper concludes with recommendations and directions for future research.

The issue of transition and transformation of communities has a long history. Particularly in today's context of increasing aging trends, cities and communities are facing unprecedented multiple challenges that drive the transition to a more inclusive and sustainable future to enable community stakeholders to have a higher quality of life experience and to fulfil their visions for the future. This paper systemically reveals insights from the past of the ageing issue in the Yangfangdian community in Beijing through a multi- level perspective (MLP) framework created with local residents, a museum and design students to understand the historical foundations of the issue and its multiple dimensions (landscape, regime, and niche) to inform community residents’ long-term visions of the future and systemic design interventions for the present day.