S.L.U.R.P. at the Milan Design Week

RUFA, SPD Scuola Politecnica di Design, and Repubblica del Design officially presented the project S.L.U.R.P. (Social Ludic Urban Regeneration Project) on the occasion of Milan Design Week and Paper Week, on Thursday 20 April 2023 at the SPD headquarters in Piazzale Lugano 19.

 
RUFA, SPD Scuola Politecnica di Design and Repubblica del Design have joined forces to create the S.L.U.R.P project (Social Ludic Urban Regeneration Project) and exhibit their students’ work at the Milan Design Week 2023, which will be held from 17 to 23 April.
During the event, participants had the opportunity to take part in a Tour to discover the installation realised, and to take part in a Talk with some of the protagonists of the project.

SLURP – Social Ludic Urban Regeneration Project

The aim of the collaboration between RUFA, SPD Scuola Politecnica di Design and Repubblica del Design was to revive an idea of sustainability and generate new creative and development opportunities. Thanks to significant collaborations with local institutions – such as the Municipio 9 and the Municipality of Milan, the experimental recycling workshop Design Differente, Fercam, Tre a Garden, Lightstone e Elaboratorio – S.L.U.R.P will be presented simultaneously at Paper Week and Design Week and will remain as a permanent tactical urbanism intervention.

The project consists of two distinct phases: one of design with workshops and laboratories in which the students of the two schools participated, and the other of concrete realisation on the ground, on the north-east side of the former Scalo Farini, between Piazzale Lugano and Piazza Schiavone.

 
Three interventions were carried out to bring S.L.U.R.P. to life: a project of Landscape Design – coordinated by designer and RUFA lecturer Meltem Eti Proto and Davide Crippa from Repubblica del Design – to create the natural urban furniture made of recycled cardboard, soil and grass that allow for greater enjoyment of outdoor spaces, and the realisation was made possible thanks to the contribution of the partner company Tre A Garden; a project of Visual Design – under the guide of designer and SPD lecturer Serena Confalonieri – with the creation of a horizontal signage route and pictorial works realised thanks to the contribution of partner company Arexons; a project of Product Design – coordinated by designers Alessandro Mason for RUFA and Matteo Guarnaccia for SPD – which involved the realisation of a series of ‘Courtesy seats’ made from discarded pallets provided by the logistics company Fercam, which will be donated to neighbourhood shops in continuity with the experience of gentle urbanism. The S.L.U.R.P. activity is part of a series of initiatives already developed in the Bovisa – Dergano – Affori design district, in a logic of scalability and circularity of educational models and interaction with the local communities and, in this case, also with the visitors of Milan Design Week.

Product and Landscape Design workshops in RUFA

The Product Design project developed at RUFA was realised by the students as part of the Workshop WOOD + NAILS, coordinated by GISTO founder Alessandro Mason. The pallet is understood as an archaic and global symbol of our age: a simple, solid object, made from a material that has accompanied us for millennia, “wood”, and assembled with a technology that has existed since the age of metals: nailing.
The workshop was a valuable opportunity to explore and study this object with the aim of imagining and designing a system of objects for urban relaxation and conviviality.

Listen to the young designers’ words

Watch the video of the event

 
© The illustrated comic strip on the cover of the article was created by Emilio Lecce, cartoonist and RUFA lecturer