The space of integration as a space calling for action

The contemporary city poses ethical problems, but also very practical issues: how can we live together in the same space, especially if “public space”, people with cultures, interests, individual needs and not always compatible. It is the problem of integration. One answer is in the nature of human behavior, unable to establish relationships except through personal knowledge processes. (Edelman - Tononi, 2000) We can not force the intersubjectivity conditions without favoring subjective processes of appropriation of space, directly dependent on the ability to act. The space is thus understood as “space to call action”, as part of a process of perception and action. The space suggests behaviors, but these are read by actors only according to their personal project of action directed to it, more or less conscious and shared. The perceptive process, therefore, does not precede the motor act, but is realized simultaneously to it as an action or mental action simulation. (Rizzolatti - Sinigaglia, 2006) This condition leads to the awareness that there are two levels of “design space”: one a priori of the designer and one of the following people. In this sense it is necessary the development of a design consciousness that considers the space as “further configurable entity” as a cooperative project that captures meaning in the making thanks to the action of subjects within it. The spatial experience as a process of knowledge and the design of the space as a guide to the active participation of each subject in the construction of its world. The space provides affordances -opportunities for action- that everyone takes as subjective chance. (Gibson, 1977) The space is shared, the experience is personal and its sharing is made possible, desirable, but not required, not simply a result of the meeting between groups of people, but between personal action plans do not necessarily shared.