Since its very inception in 2010, the summerLab programme has been putting forward an engagement with a multiplicity of urban borders, interpreting their narratives and attempting to challenge their exclusionary role. With this aim, the programme has always sought to partner with local organisations and institutions, understanding their agendas and agencies, and devising along with them and the workshops’ participants innovative and critical methodologies of design research.
In its 2017 series, the workshops investigated two divided cities – Jerusalem and Nicosia – and, in London, explored potentially divisive discourses emerging around the concept of urban health. What borders did the participants encounter? What do such borders actually divide? And how do design research methodologies allow to understand and possibly overcome such divisions?
The publication, edited by Giorgio Talocci and Camillo Boano, attempts to answer these questions featuring reflections from facilitators and participants of the three workshops, while sharing images from the workshops’ urban explorations and design outcomes. The publication wants to be a contribution to the collective struggle of all the organisations, individuals and groups that we encountered during our journey, and to the wider debate about the role of design and design research in the production of just urban spaces.
We wish to share our deepest appreciation to all the coordinators, partners and participants, specifically: to Haim Yacobi (DPU), Silvia Covarino (Girne American University) and Kay Pallaris (Mapping Futures Ltd) for sharing their local knowledge and reflections with us, and for devising three challenging programmes in — respectively — Jerusalem, Nicosia, London. Thanks to Camila Cociña for the work of coordination and facilitation during the workshops, and to Azadeh Mashayekhi for the great administrative work throughout all stages of the programme. Thanks to Ricardo Martén for his wonderful and patient graphic work on the pamphlet, and for the facilitation of Nicosia’s workshop along with Silvia Covarino and Camila Cociña.
The pamphlet is available for download here (PDF)
Don’t forget to check out the 2018 programme!