Situated Vocabularies

The book explores the Situated Vocabulary, a participatory design research project aimed at co-designing vocabularies of shared meanings to feed conversations between situated communities and prompt transformative actions for their future.
Drawing inspiration from the vocabulary artifact and rooted in Hannah Arendt’s definition of democracy, the project explores the transformative power of words to highlight both convergences and potential divergences, and the possible nuances of meanings in-between. Its objective is to disarticulate and potentially rearticulate different perspectives within a specific context, collaboratively gathering meanings from the diverse set of actors and stakeholders residing in it. The project presented in the book is framed in two different experimentations within the city of Milan and developed in the urban living labs of Off Campus.
Off Campus, an initiative by Politecnico di Milano, aims to make the university’s presence in the city more tangible, fostering researchers’ responsibility, attentiveness to social challenges, and closeness to the community. By exploring case studies in the Nolo neighborhood and San Vittore prison (Milan, Italy), the book questions how designing for participation can embrace other worldviews, attempting to identify the radical interdependence deeply connecting them.