Town and Country
Rural Play: Design for Learning for Children and Adults View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tao Huang
Playgrounds are common in cities, but in rural area in the United States as well as in many other places in the world, they are scarcely available due to many factors, mainly financial constraints. Some might argue that since there are so much land and nature in the rural area, there is no need to design and build manmade structures for play. Indeed, children can organize their own play in a natural and unaltered environment. However, in today’s security culture, rural children are no longer roaming the forests unsupervised. Rather, in the absence of play areas, they are being isolated in their homes. As a result, children fail to develop adequate social skills due to the lack of interaction with other children and adults. A playground brings together children and families live far apart in the rural area to help build these social skills and environmental knowledge. Especially considering the increasing numbers of home-schooled children in the rural area, a new form of playground that blends play and learn is much needed. Therefore, a rural playground should be designed to teach children about their surrounding environment. Our paper discusses the research conducted for a small organic permaculture farm with a business plan to create a “u-pick” operation to provide more attraction, and to teach ecology, agroforestry, aquaculture, and climate science to both children and adults. The paper discusses the challenges and opportunities in this ongoing process and offers suggestions for future development in rural play and learn plans.
On Energy and Alternative Small Infrastructures View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carla Aramouny
This paper presents alternative proposals for the energy sector in Lebanon, through the work of an architecture course that intersects visualization, design advocacy, and speculative design. The work centers around the potential of small-scale hybrid architectural interventions to incorporate infrastructural services with lower environmental impact, while prioritizing community needs. The fuel-based energy sector in Lebanon is a notorious example of a highly corrupted and inefficient infrastructure that, to this day, remains largely inoperative. Degraded after years of civil war, political cronyism and corruption, the sector’s public energy supply has been replaced by a huge network of private generators, controlled through political exploitation and monopolies. Today, with the economic collapse the country is living, it is clear that the energy sector, which strains the government budget with the biggest losses, must be tackled first prior to any other anti-corruption strategy or economic plan. The possibility of change and growth in this sector is great where investing in new energy approaches and efficient infrastructure, can result in a positive ripple effect for the recovery of the local economy. Taking this as a main premise, this study shows how the energy sector in Lebanon can become an opportunity for change, when coupled with other spatial and communal needs. With potential advancements in sectors such as solar and wind power, hydropower, and bio-fuel energy production, a diverse network of small-scale spatial infrastructures can be a powerful mechanism to provide renewable energy, while addressing the scales and needs of the community and the environment.
Multilevel Coordination Strategy for Service Design Aimed at Supporting Inland Areas View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rachele Gracci
Due to the demographic, economic and political power of the central urban areas, the more distant territories - known as inland areas - tend to be subjected to rather than determine new development policies, such as investments in essential services and infrastructure. Therefore, actively heeding the voice of citizens becomes a problem of institutional design, so heading towards multi-level coordination seems to be a convincing solution in order to improve citizens advocacy towards policymakers and thus correct this imbalance. This research analyzes three forms of engagement in service design, designing a single, complex interconnected system: civic activism at the micro level, advocacy in umbrella-institutions at the middle level, and knowledge circulation and capacity building in European multi-actor organization at the macro level. Through six evaluation criteria - relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impactfulness and sustainability - and with the help of service design and strategic design tools, as well as case studies, the research analyzes the possible scope of potential interventions to improve policies, programmes and projects determining outputs, outcomes and impact meaningful medium to long- term effects on citizens, enterprises and public administrations in inland areas.
