The City of Care

Dwelling reveals the definition of an “anthropological” existential space in which to experience relationships within the world. This living space is described by Christian Norberg-Schulz (Norberg-Schulz C (1979) Genius loci: Paesaggio, ambiente, architettura. Electa) as consisting of many spaces: a pragmatic space in which people satisfy their biological needs; a perceptual space; an abstract space of pure logical relations; a cultural space in which people find their collective activities as a community; and an expressive space related to art as an interpretation of change. In this spatial composition, man projects his image of the world into his environment in order to feel at home. And when the world becomes an interior, man is capable of dwelling, which then implies something more than shelter. Dwelling integrates both concepts of house—the shelter, the dimension of intimacy, comfort, pleasure and security, and the response to our biological needs; and home—the cradle of the inhabitant’s existence with its thoughts, memories and dreams, man’s primary world. A duality that is similarly found in the definition of care: a diligent and caring concern for a subject/object, which engages both our soul and our activity—caring for someone or something, actively looking after it, providing for its needs both physical and psychological. The link between the concept of care and living goes back to the ages and is not even referable to the human species alone. It is therefore necessary to identify a closer temporal and geographical span to try to trace some fundamental transitions and degrees of influence between the two terms, for this reason the period considered starts from the nineteenth century till today, and it took into account mostly the Western Countries.

Natural, built and social environment have a critical influence on health and wellbeing; a fundamental role to improve the quality of life can be played by interior architecture, whose mission is to define the relationship between people and spaces, addressing psychological and physical aspects. As we learnt from the pandemic impact, the individual and community quality of life is increasingly related to a care component. From an eco-systemic perspective, reuse and reinvention can be considered a strategy of the mind and of life, as well as a sustainable approach to design, an opportunity to exploit the potential of existing buildings, a tool for taking care of people and the planet.

This research aims to address the relationship between “the city of care” and interior spaces in relation to the health care emergency that has partially—or substantially—changed our understanding of the design of spaces.

Imagination is one of the most complex mental conditions that human beings have generated and refined throughout their evolutionary history. Imagination, and the use that the individual performs, is also a contextual test of mental well-being as well as a tool to improve it. The text analyses possible ways of adopting the characteristics of imagination to facilitate the design of places in urban public space that take into account the mental well-being of the individual. The first part introduces the research topic, presenting the theoretical framework and the relationships that exist between science of mind and the design of urban public space. The second part analyses the relationship between imagination and psychology and between the former and the urban environment. The last section finally traces, in the form of conclusions, the adaptability and usability of the characteristics of imagination to the research topic.

During the past few years, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the contemporary definition and interpretation of “care” has been updated and has also acquired new meanings for those who live in urban contexts. The paper explores how today design can codify tools to design systems of spaces-products-services that promote a new way of living in which the concept of care, understood in its broad meaning, of individuals in the contemporary urban context is central. In particular hybrid spaces for living, working and travelling are investigated as an opportunity to increase processes of attention and care that are not limited to the private sphere, but that contaminate the neighborhoods.

Density, critical mass, connectivity and exchange, the draw of the crowd: these are the pillars on which the success of the metropolis rested before being overturned by the pandemic. If until yesterday the only rule was “keep going”, now on the desks of mayors worldwide lays the hypothesis that the century of cities is coming to end. The ever-present threat of inequalities and poverty furthers the need for new forms of coexistence with what a city is not, to make urban development more sustainable from an environmental and social point of view. These developments have put both the international debate and adaptation strategies deployed in the midst of the pandemic shock in various cities around the world, including Milan, under the microscope. The aim of the paper is to analyze the hypothesis that cities, by putting in place adequate strategies of innovation and inclusion, developing practices at the service of citizens, organizations, and companies with a social impact, promoting reuse of hybrid spaces, near-working, and building cities on a human scale, inspiring the idea of the “15-min city”, will continue to dominate.

The novel 2019 Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has revealed numerous challenges in coordinating and arranging hospital spaces at both national and international level. The overwhelming number of hospital admissions of people affected by COVID-19 has highlighted difficulties in managing, updating, and refurbishing healthcare spaces. The objective of this study is to provide meta-design indications that demonstrate the value of spatial design in containing pandemic health emergencies and improving quality for different healthcare users. Utilized research methods include a review of existing literature on the current state of the art, analysis of design solutions that emerged in response to past pandemics and comparison of existing planning tools on the subject. Additionally, given the contemporaneity of the issue, a cross-sectional survey was used to collect and compare the experiences and design strategies adopted by some selected Italian hospital. The results of the study highlight the most effective and recurrent solutions that have supported health action in the fight against COVID-19. Emphasis was placed on solutions with a human-centered approach, as well as those that seek to promote the physical and psychological well-being of all users involved. In conclusion, the resulting meta-design indications represent a starting point for developing detailed design solution to enhance pandemic readiness. Additional research is needed to support healthcare facilities in becoming more welcoming and efficient while improving COVID-19 patient care and protecting healthcare workers.

Access to healthcare is deeply conditioned by several social factors such as health policies and economic conditions but, undoubtedly, hospitals are recognized worldwide as the symbol of the healthcare system in its maximum complexity and they are services that will never decay. Since their origins, they represent the social community and, in the socio-cultural context, the original values of interdependence and solidarity. They embody the permeability and availability of entertainment and cultural activities in order to respond to the community’s needs. Starting from the evolution of hospital design, currently healthcare facilities are spaces for care but they also host research and education areas, workplaces, public spaces, etc. As healing places, they require specific considerations in the project design to mitigate the sense of isolation and disorientation, to ease concerns and promote health. As the Scientific Community highlighted, nowadays the quality of spaces plays a key-role in the medical processes, contributing both to improve the experience and comfort perceived by users and to improve the efficiency of staff. For this reason, hospital planners and stakeholders are called to act and to give rise to user-centred system in terms of comfort, efficiency, organizational and operational effectiveness, with an evidence based design approach. Therefore, the scope of this contribution is to argue the evolution of these architectures and to pinpoint the current trends of healthcare design regarding different fields of interest such as building typologies and functional layouts, sustainability, flexibility, soft qualities, innovative materials and the relationship with green.

This contribution describes some activities promoted by a group of roboticists from Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia and Università di Pisa in response to the pandemic. In particular, a “do-it-yourself” (DIY) open-source service and related hardware/products will be illustrated to help combat some consequences of the Covid 19 emergency. The project was born to facilitate communication between patients isolated in Covid 19 hospitals’ ward and their relatives. The teleoperated robot named LHF Connect can move autonomously around the hospital. Once it arrives at each patient's bed, it can provide a video call between patients and their relatives or friends outside the isolated hospital ward. In this scenario, the robot is piloted by a volunteer operator working from home or in a safe room inside the hospital. The teleoperator will guide LHF Connect toward each patient's bed using a laptop or a smartphone. LHF Connect is an open-source platform that leverages mature robotics technologies designed to be easily reproducible even in extreme conditions such as lockdown situations. The platform was reproduced during the first pandemic outbreak in Europe by other people independently, and it has been tested by medical staff in real scenarios and isolated Covid 19 departments.

The new vision and the strategy for the innovation of the healthcare systems rel upon prevention and territorial infrastructures. Digital technologies offer new systems for collecting, processing, and interpreting personal and community health data in an interoperable database. This action supports patient empowerment and the implementation of a new healthcare system closer to citizens, improving their quality of life, providing advanced and data-driven services. One emerging concept and related solutions are new Capsules equipped with biomedical devices to support checkups and monitoring of citizens to enable advanced services in a personalized coaching. They are small private spaces that could be distributed over a territory to provide people entry point to healthcare services with a performing user experience and motivational engaging reward to sustain long-term adherence. Also triage procedures could be facilitated by the adoption of such technologies. This could be one of the new steps forward to tackle the challenge of a healthcare system reform and innovation to ensure a future healthcare that will be more and more accessible and equitable, and high performing.

This paper illustrates the centrality of “taking care” in determining the quality of inhabiting as well as of design aimed at good quality living. The expression “taking care” means an attitude characterized by multidimensionality and complexity. It implies the enhancement of individual, territorial and collective memories in terms of creative and playful re-invention. It also implies attention to people in their wholeness, that is, as characterized by resources but also by fragility; by physical, psychological and social needs that characterize them in a qualifying and not defective way; by conflicts and the need to live together and meet even when they are unresolved; by ordinary and extraordinary health recovery processes (“health gain” and recovery, W.H.O. in Health Promotion Glossary, 1998), since individuals and communities are very rarely in a state of full and ideal health; by ethical tensions sometimes resolved in a socially desirable and high-profile way and sometimes not. “Taking care” is consistent with a dynamic vision of reality, characterized by evolution and change, which pays attention to the systemic processes that facilitate the overcoming of difficulties and impasses through the emergence of discontinuous living conditions with respect to the past. From the point of view of design, “taking care” takes concrete form in the exercise of attention to the quality of the relationships between all the actors involved, as the domain of the relationship cannot be separated from that of perception, imagination and affects (Bateson et al. in Behav Sci 1:251–264, 1956). It is characterized by a frankly transdisciplinary approach and enhances metaphorical thinking as a way of access to interiority, understood as an existential quality characteristic of human inhabiting.

Hurts very often leave signs. These signs can be more or less visible. They can be both physical and psychological. We usually call them “scars”. In English, “scar formation” and “healing” are synonyms. In medicine, the formation of scars depends on the conditions of the tissue, on the whole person hurt and on environmental factors. Hurts can involve just one individual or a group of people (a family, a community, even a whole nation). So, we can find scars on single bodies (skin, bones, organs) and on buildings, public spaces, cities. Visible scars can be hidden (with shame or decency) or shown (with pride or display). Time is obviously involved as well. Scars are the visible traces that something painful happened, so they are a physical kind of memory. And we can assume that all of this is true also in the psychological process of healing, both for individuals and for communities. Scars can become a boundary, physically and metaphorically, between past and future, between me and not-me, between victim and perpetrator. The way we deal with our seams tells about ourselves as well as about the hurt that caused it and as about the environment we live in. Environment, intended both in its physical and in its relational qualities, can help and encourage the process of healing, with conscious action or just with a supportive and enduring emotional mood. But it can also slow and even hinder this process, with and impatient and hostile emotional mood. Sometimes one’s process of healing collides with another’s will to forget or even erase hurts or uncomfortable, painful memories. These are quite familiar situations for a psychotherapist, as we meet them in many of the stories of our patients. All these can become useful lenses for watching through scars in cities and public spaces, when both hurts and scars involve whole communities.

In the last decade, many scholars have been very critical of the more established ways in which planning and urban policy deal with “diversity issues”, such as social mixing initiatives, or the creation of places of consumption such as the cultural and ethnic quarters. These policies are here assumed as forms of social control and care of people and places through space control. The paper takes stock of the current critical views and accepts their invitation to “suspend” a general regulative and design tension, by proposing a more reflexive position aimed at understanding how to capture the potentialities of places where forms of everyday multiculturalism and coexistence among strangers occur. To this end, based on more than twenty years of field-work and research, as well as on exchanges with colleagues dealing with these issues, a sort of “draft checklist” of some core points to be considered to develop ethnographical paths focused on the uses of the space in multicultural areas is proposed. This includes a methodological positioning on ethnographical approaches carried out by multicultural research teams where an added value is given to different viewpoints; a capacity to consider the intertwining between the very local dynamics of the micro-publics of encounter, but also the structural conditions underpinning the possibility for the encounter to occur; a broad view of multiculturalism related to an intersectional perspective where also inequalities are a core point; a very open definition of resources for planning and policymaking, able to go beyond the economic and growth-dependent dimension.

Human species have been migrating for at least two million years, out of choice or necessity, and the result is that human beings have evolved, with adaptive flexibility and migratory capacity. At a time when climate change, as well as political, social, and economic emergencies cause forced flows, the freedom to migrate (and the right to remain in one's own country), should be guaranteed. For twenty years, Naga Har Centre in Milan has been offering a place of welcome and socialization to asylum applicants, refugees, torture victims. Naga Har’s aim is to become a safe place where time, space and words can be returned to the people from whom humanity has stolen everything.