The City of Enna stands today to have to manage a (slow and deep) transition to the roles, quite new, of “university town” and of “host city”. This new placement generates some interesting points for all those subjects that more directly deal with the study of the "facts" of the territory; opening up ample spaces for new themes and visions of development. The morphological state and the settlement conditions; the overall size the limited number of inhabitants; the actual resources and the bustling productive and social structure; shall ensure that the City of Enna - in the four urban systems that compose it (Upper Enna, Lower Enna, Enna Pergusa and Rural Enna) - becomes readable as a special field of study and experimentation of the most general reasoning concerning the functioning of the "real space" of the "real life" in both their location and role within the extreme complexity of the "city machine". The project focuses in aiming to carry out the second edition of the workshop "Spaces for the real life", a meeting place between the shared planning, the craft production processes and the regeneration of urban spaces. The workshop shall be the place of transfer the scientific and use knowledge in the relationship with the artisan production for the regeneration of marginal urban areas. The place where to start a shared technic design lab with the real users applied to artisanship and concluded with a real installation of the works in the places that will be chosen for the experimentation. To the benefit of the whole community, permanent and temporary, of the Upper Enna. It intends to offer a time of skills training, practical and innovative to the direct recipients, youth and students, resulting in a regeneration of target urban areas to the advantage of the whole city.

The project aims to build bridges and to generate links between these two realities, through the implementation of annual workshops of "connection" even among the various scales of the project and the various figures involved. Add to this that the careful regeneration, shared and low-cost, of fringe areas and urban spaces abandoned or degraded, is a widespread need in the regional Sicilian territory and that can often be stimulated through art and design support for public places and through the provision of new design objects for the urban space. To use these initiatives and play them back over time in different places, it can facilitate the fulfilment of this need, it can promotes the re-appropriation of places and territories, it can increase their liveability, the welcome and the subsequent tourist appeal.

All this may lead to: a diversification and a rise of the skills of the direct beneficiaries, thanks to the comparison between design and realization; an increase of awareness of citizenship, by involving into active participation; a punctual regeneration of the target urban spaces, through the temporary installation of made design works; an increase in the attractiveness of the target areas and of the historic city in general; a stimulus to creativity and to innovation of the product, in the involved local micro-production system; an identification of new local and supra-local networks.

Planned activities: theoretical communications; workshop activities; graphic and technical design; completion of projects with local artisans; installation of works produced in the chosen urban spaces; exhibition of design objects made.

Can participate in all the university students enrolled in the four Sicilian Universities, in the studies classes related to architecture and design, or architects who are under the age of 35 years old. In the selection procedure, it will be respected gender equality in the number of participants. For participants coming from the Sicilian Region in the age between 18 and 35 years, the participation is for free.

The workshop will be held in Enna on December 14th to 20th 2016.

The registration form can be downloaded from the web site www.designalcentro.org 

Francesco Mingrino | President and Organizational Responsible
Fabio Naselli | Scientific Director
Claudio Gambardella | Art Director
Luigi Patitucci | Creative Director