Design, Systems and Territorial Networks. The Experience of the Wd_workshop Design in Morcone (2001-2005)

The Wd_workshop design – proposing itself as a frontier laboratory in a specific productive and cultural context such as that of the internal areas of Southern Italy – represented one of the first tests of transfer of design on a territorial scale and, at the same time, a crucial step for the consolidation of the national academic network of design. Conceived and organized by the University of Naples Federico II – coordinated by Ermanno Guida, Alfonso Morone, Vincenzo Cristal- lo and Marina Parente – the Wd immediately characterized itself as a collective and experimental experience, in which Politecnico di Milano took on an important role, both for the number of researchers involved and for the desire to field-test the methodologies that were being de- veloped in those years on the theme of design for territories and local development. A recurring event, which took place in Morcone, a small hill town in the province of Benevento, from 2001 to 2005 (for five yearsin the first week of September) with thematic editions aimed at the de- sign-driven development of local production and cultural realities, and which over the years has represented a model of cohesion on a scien- tific and relational level of a passionate and highly motivated academic community. In this peripheral context, the various Italian design universities met annually, where the particular spatial-temporal-environmental conditions facilitated interdisciplinary and intergenerational dialogue and comparison processes. The complex program of initiatives within a convivial climate – whose critical and operational extension was sub- sequently formalized in a particular model, capable of concretizing the formula of a «participatory and collective design for the territory» – has made Morcone an extra-institutional occasion through which to sup- port on a cultural and organizational level the nascent national design network strengthened by the SDI Sistema Design Italia research and the subsequent Me.design and D.Cult. In line with the concept of action research currently being devel- oped at Politecnico di Milano, the Milanese group has supported the Neapolitan coordination since the first edition in 2001, strongly charac- terising the scientific community involved in the organisational activity of the Wd