Planned To Be Reclaimed:

Public Design Strategies for Spontaneous Practices of Spatial Appropriation

Abstract

Several contemporary studies on public space focus on its loss, in relation to an increase in people’s disengagement fromthese types of spaces. Since the 1960s, a considerable part of urban culture has attempted to develop strategies for peopleto re-appropriate public space and to ‘inhabit the city again.’ This has defined a line of research that, although now consolidated,is still little known in its complexity. In the effort to create a unified framework for the different attempts through whicharchitecture has historically responded to the rise of spontaneous forms of urban creativity, this paper outlines a short historyof design strategies aimed at enabling and encouraging different forms of spatial appropriation. It also highlights a gradualshift from prescriptive and repeatable rules to site-specific approaches, prompting a new disciplinary convergence betweenurban planning and design, interior architecture, industrial design and public art.