Designing the Frame-way: a new sense of place for the Campus University

This contribution is the extract of a research work, related to the relationship between design and public space, which specifically concerns the design experimentation of an innovative multimedia device aimed at enhancing the socio-cultural value of the external spaces of Campus Universities. The research investigates the dichotomies object-space, design-context and man-environment through the definition of an innovative orientation system which, starting from a qualitative analysis of the places of the Campus Universities and the main users (students), redefines the social relationships between people and recover the semantic dimension of the spaces in which they live and work. Starting from various samples of the places, from field interviews addressed to real and potential users and from the categorization of spaces according to their specific characteristics and peculiarities, the research has developed some hypotheses / strategies for re-qualification through the object of design: a new way of finding your way through an installation positioned in particular areas of the Campus and aimed at improving inclusion and accessibility. Particularly significant is also the reflection on the relationship between the morphological-formal component of the project and the technological one, which interprets, in a ‘laic’ way and with a critical-doubtful attitude, the relationship between the real dimension and the virtual dimension of the design project. Modifiability, informativeness and accessibility are concepts necessary to improve the quality of the services of the contemporary public space, but are filtered by a culture of the project in which man and, in general, the dialogic-social and relational component are always central and prior. The places of the Campus University are therefore intended as places of research and experimentation in which the design project takes shape by stimulating social changes, behaviour setting processes and innovation systems, connected to the field of Design for All.