Designing new spaces of know-how Ex-Filanda: a creative hub for the meeting between next generations and entrepreneurship

Abstract

The contribution is focused on the renovation projects of spaces as a fertile field for the generation of the public good. The study goes through a case study, which offers an investigation of the commingling between cultural and productive activities as a driver for growing social intentions. The case study shows a development where the research phase has created a productive laboratory born by the collaboration of the territory young talents. A makerspace placed inside a project of architectural regeneration and reviewed by the intervention of Politecnico di Milano. The project history showed the difficulties in balancing cultural and productive activities, preventing the construction of a network cable to generate values. Difficulties that hindered the developing of a micro-economy, creating uncertainties about wages that made the professionals involved to choose more stable work conditions. The absence of heterogeneous knowledge couldn’t make possible the relations with institutions and entrepreneurship hindering by consequence the generation of economies for the sustenance of the project. The paper means to comprehend which kind of model can sustain the makerspace development in a low-density context such as the rural environment, evidencing the necessities of a self-analysis process for the revaluation of its role to the possibilities offered by the territory. In drawing up the evaluation of limits, the article proposes a strategic renewal of the ex-industrial complex’s goals and studies, how new ways of young creatives engagement, might attract a network of companies. An involvement that allows youngsters a direct dialogue with companies and artisans of the territory and that could offer to the companies themselves an opportunity to innovate processes and products.