Building Collective Knowledge Through Design: The Making of the Contrada Nicolo Riparian Garden Along the Simeto River (Sicily, Italy)

Insurgent movements advocating environmental protection have garnered attention from design disciplines for their capacity to envision sustainable powerful transformations of human environments. In the last twenty years, the recognition of this potential has entered into research agendas, which have mainly focused on explaining through case studies how these phenomena have been able to affect institutional planning efforts in relation to environmental issues. Following a Participatory Action Research approach, this article presents a design experience carried out by a partnership established between a grass-roots association and university researchers in the Simeto River Valley (Sicily, Italy). It shows how design research techniques, borrowed from place making and community design approaches, can be used as instruments to promote goals of community-based organisations and advance their capacity in conceiving actions to transform local environments.