Designing Connected Places is an education event dedicated to young people from the best international design schools.
For fourteen days, teachers and students share their experiences and live together in the splendid Università di Scienze Gastronomiche of Pollenzo (Cuneo), the university founded by the international association Slow Food and considered one of the best private institutes in Italy.
180 students take part, divided in 6 classes, each one dedicated to in-depth study of a specific theme through workshops, seminars and lessons by designers and experts of international renown.
The International Summer School offers six themes:
six topics of great value that respond, at the same time, to specific design needs expressed in Piemonte in this historical period of profound and open change. A valuable occasion to bring together ‘high-brow thinking' on major themes of change and real, possible and perceivable transformations.
A great challenge for the design of today: listening to local needs, understanding the requests for change that can be expressed through the institutions that govern the region, the companies that produce there, the communities that live there and the values that have accumulated over time.
The local area becomes a “patron”, putting the most significant local needs in the limelight and opening up to outside contributions. Starting from the specific requirements expressed, the workshops offer multiple interpretations of the questions raised, through a series of different approaches (design components, rapid prototyping, participatory strategies, industrial ecology etc.), giving life to a matrix of many combinations.

ACTIVE WELFARE - Products, services and communication for a city of health and well-being; MULTI-MOBILITY -
Products, services and communication for efficient urban mobility; OPEN AND SAFETY TOWN -Products, services and communication for the identity and safety of contemporary outdoor urban areas; EATING 2.0 - Products, services and communication for food and food systems; COMPLEXITY MAPS - Products, services and communication for the representation of places and communities; DESIGNING THE PROCESS - Strategies, prototypes and communication for urban bodies and production systems.

Type: Special project