DE/BaTE. Deconstructing/Building a Thinking Environment

What is the meaning and role of debate in contemporary culture? How do we debate architecture and the city today? With the ever-developing world of information and communication technologies, and the democratization of the web the question is: could they offer the basis on which to build a new way of interpreting the city, and so study urban phenomena through its most representative places? DE/BaTE uses information and communication technologies (ICT) to build a new thinking environment (i.e. active and interactive), which gives a new sense to the irrelevance of space of the liquid world (Bauman). Its challenge is to use the “virtual” to reinforce the “real”. It selects two kinds of “case studies”- projects which have given rise to important transformations to the cities in which they have been built, or places that are waiting for a new life – and it (re)constructs their official story, through a rigorous research and through the involvement of all protagonists (designers and all people who have had, and have, a role in its building process and in its management). Thus, it uses a complex hi-tech system characterized by a double nature, physical and virtual, to open the case study to new free and unlimited interpretations, which will ‘deconstruct’ its official story and will enrich it through the ‘construction’ of new stories... The system is composed of: - A total innovative «hi-tech container» (STORY BOX), a small movable architecture which travels and «takes» the project to different cities ready to host it. In each of these places, it will invite people to interact... The design process of STORY BOX goes beyond the boundaries of Architecture and integrates the fields of Visual Communication and ICT. Its technological substrate is the very challenge: it will analyse the container space for building a sentient environment able to translate complex and heterogeneous information, into an engaging spatial narrative that can comprise a mix of wide-ranging media and communicational strategies. - A Web Platform and an App for smartphones and tablets, which allow the case study to be constantly «under debate»... DE/BaTE will store all the stories of STORY BOX, offering a dynamic archive of expert and common knowledge: an innovative democratic patrimony of urban culture. DE/BaTE aims to act as a “facilitator”, helping the entire community to activate new, dynamic and stronger relationships with their cities. It will offer citizen a tool to reinforce their active role both as users and as privileged interlocutors for designers, administrators and politicians. At the same time it will offer designers, administrators and politicians a tool to better explain their actions, testing both the specialized and general public’s perceptions. DE/BaTE, through its «beating heart» STORY BOX, and through the Web Platform, gives a sense to its first foundational concept: it doesn’t have the presumption to want to tell or recount everything, but it tries to demonstrate the opposite. It tries to stimulate an eager and open curiosity, to bring awareness to the fact that the city is a dynamic entity, and that its phenomena, the values and the problems of its constituents elements depend on the culture and society which live in it and allow it to live.