INSTRUMENTOS Y TÉCNICAS DE RECOLECCIÓN DE DATOS

initiative and a valuable medium in supporting the aftercare of the project. This will hopefully help to empower the inhabitants of the neighborhood to incrementally improve their quality of life and eventually reduce the sense of fatalism connected to the fact of always waiting for solutions to ‘descend from the heavens’, e.g. in a top-down way. While several valuable ingredients to a PIP have been identified through the course of this and other similar projects, what makes certain recipes work and others fail, requires further experimentation, research and debate.

This is why the authors decided to study the nature of PIPs in a little more detail within the context of a course at the MAD Faculty this year, together with P&C partner institution: Parsons NY, The New School for Design.⁵²

In the next sections we will take a slightly more reflective look at PIPs through the lense of philosophy.

3.2 Freedom to experiment

The freedom to experiment is a key characteristic of PIPs. They provide people - across boundaries of disciplines or backgrounds, yet with common interests - with the space and freedom to explore new modes of interaction within society, one in which exceptions are welcomed. They are places where various options are explored in parallel to one another. Showcases - collections of innovative concepts and initiatives with a unique touch to it - are built as inspiration for others to adopt or built further upon and diverse expressions of shared (added) values.

When one looks at our cultural history, several other such contexts of free experimentation and expression come to mind. One such example is the rarity cabinet, or rather “Wunderkammer”.⁵³

The Wunderkammer was a physical space where to collect different elements of reality, from the mineral, organic world but also from archeology, historical artifacts, artworks; in short, everything that was considered to be eccentric, beyond the everyday mainstream. The Wunderkammer was a “theatrum mundi”⁵⁴, a heir to Guilio Camillo’s “Cabinet of the World”⁵⁵, where the way in which the different objects - naturalia and artificialia⁵⁶ - were presented, embedded in a sort of narrative, i.e. the story of the personal philosophy or “Weltanschauung” of the cabinet’s

owner. The freedom to contextualize, creating personal collections on the basis of new connections represented a relevant change in the history of the Renaissance.

Michel Foucault described the Wunderkammer’s mindset, which characterized the Renaissance’s

“episteme”⁵⁷, as that which allows true discovery and embodies the spirit of exploratory research.

The Wunderkammer can be a metaphorical source of inspiration when addressing the topic of PIPs. That what appears to be the exception to today’s society finds in it a place to be nurtured and grown, so that it can become a kind of small-scale model, a seed for a new way of organizing or running society, an exception, a “rarity”, which could hence possibly finds its way into the mainstream in a near future.⁵⁸

In this sense - returning to Foucault - one could also see PIPs as “heterotopias”, literally “other places”

or “places of otherness”, alternatives to the ones imposed by the actual state of things, the predominant paradigm of thought, in this case that of top-down organized, often consumption-driven and individual-oriented society.⁵⁹

3.3 PIP as places of exception

PIPs can be regarded as a kind of in-between spaces in which exceptions, alternatives to today’s market driven society are grown, in which people experiment with the preconditions for a new societal paradigm - participative, open, a-hierarchical. The exceptions to the current way of deciding upon the res publica which PIPs embody, could hence show new ways forward and possibly even become or introduce new rules.

The idea of the exception as grounding the rule is something which we inherited from the notion of “state of exception” (“Ausnahmezustand”) in the philosophy of both Carl Schmitt⁶⁰ and Walter Benjamin61. Both authors emphasize the way in which it is the exception that determines political action. The inside and the outside do not exclude each other, yet they determine each other.

In contemporary philosophy, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben⁶² elaborates further upon this notion.

According to him, since Roman Law, the establishment of the rule was based on the exception to the rule, namely the figure of the Homo Sacer, a man - both sacred and damned at the same time - who was considered to be outside of law and, as such, could

be killed by anybody without any legal repercussion.

According to Agamben, it is this figure which delineates and thereby grounds Roman Law. In this respect, that which grounds the law does so from outside of it.

Again, the established state of things - the rule - is grounded by what is outside of it, namely the exception.

From the point of view of the state of exception contemporary society embodies the potentiality to change the state of things and allow them to become mainstream. Reading PIPs as such, would emphasize the way people-powered public services could grow from a niche - a state of exception - to become mainstream, as could the way of co-design and co-producing services. Along the same line of reasoning, the partner state, as a state of exception, could eventually ‘replace’ the welfare state as we know it today. The PIP, as a means to open up the possibility of gathering and making the process of co-producing services tangible in all of its steps, is a powerful medium to create and support people-powered public services, as such, could be regarded a powerful instrument for the partner state as the exception to become the rule.

Referring back to Rousseau’s theory mentioned earlier⁶³, namely that the changing of political paradigm affects human nature, we can see how designers and design schools as key actors in the process of social innovation have a responsibility here. As a matter of fact, they are facilitators of this paradigm shift, as they are the ones that help, support, and often initiate the process of co-design of services which involve both citizens and public authorities, a role that in the past used to be fulfilled solely by public authorities. As such, their work can help to

propel this state of exception forward.

Design as such becomes political action. As design extends

into the public realm in general and soci(et)

its practitioners and contexts of operations in which they are active, would benefit from a closer analysis of the consequences - both positive and negative - of its actions: i.e. their political implications, their potential or ability to change the state of things and, as such, to affect human nature.

The state of exception defines a threshold, a place on the borders of society.⁶⁴ PIPs as thresholds act within society but also in a way which differs from traditional modus operandi. Much like the Arcades in Walter Benjamin’s Parisian Passages⁶⁵ - i.e. the Galleries of glass and steel which give the illusion of the outside world - PIPs are physical spaces of exception, of the threshold, where inside and outside of society and decision-making meet.

As in-between spaces PIPs also resemble in a way the rhizomatic⁶⁶ structures described by Deleuze and Guattari in their “A Thousand Plateaus”⁶⁷: a-hierarchical, a-centric, open, able to take on a thousand different configurations. The metaphor of the “rhizome” also points towards new forms of knowledge sharing and development, beyond the rigidities of former structures based on strict categories, dichotomies and hierarchies.

One could extend it as such to an image of society being structured in an alternative, ‘exceptional’ way.

Characterized by their in-between and experimental nature, their operating in an open, a-hierarchical, a-centric way, PIPs indeed seem to fit the mould of Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic metaphor. Yet, new structures, new frameworks also require new ways to evaluate them.

Do these initiatives represent a genuine revolutionary power kickstarting systemic change? Could they continue to play that role? Or would they instead soon become just another instrument to reinforce the current state of things, being absorbed into the mainstream? How can we compare and evaluating the different experiences of PIPs we encounter on a global scale? Most of these questions can probably not be answered yet now, but are very much worth asking and reflecting upon. They further emphasize also the responsibility of designers and design schools to maintain their genuine vocation of representing and working towards valuable, positive societal change.

4 CONCLUSION

4.1 A participatory way of co-designing a new society The previous sections have addressed many of the ways in which people-powered public services and their embedding within local contexts both physically and in terms of social fabric, could provide added value to society in view of positive change.

Yet they also feature some risks ranging from the underestimation of their political impact and value to the risk of losing their exceptional character and becoming absorbed into the mainstream. The latter does not imply PIPs and the likes should not strive to grow or multiply, yet should be critical in seeking new alternatives, exceptional ways of approaching challenges continuously.

Time will tell whether initiatives such as these will grow powerful enough to bring about profound systemic change in society or not. Current signals which can be picked up globally however, do seem to signal such change or at least its potential and can be considered seeds of a new emerging paradigm of citizens, entrepreneurs and the public sector joining forces in a partner state kind of model.

Most valuable in this respect today is probably to experiment as much as possible with what people-powered public services can mean to our contemporary society, how such experimentation can be supported and kept going, e.g. through the setup of a diverse typology of PIPs. The latter appear to contain valuable ingredients. Experimentation with different recipes will allow us to learn from successes and failures. If it is true what we previously stated, i.e. that all these phenomena belong to a rhizomatic paradigm of knowledge sharing and creation, we need also to evaluate such successes and failures, such approaches, through the lens of a different mindset. This is a challenge for the community of practice to take up.

The co-design and co-production of people-powered public services can benefit greatly from the presence of a dedicated physical space, equipped to support the physical gathering of inhabitants, civil servants and eventually policy makers to co-create new solutions.

Moreover, they provide added value to the solutions developed as such by supporting continuity, facilitating exposure and adoption by third parties. They can aid in the continuity of projects started by design schools/

designers, their aftercare, but also in initiating new

initiatives and bringing the right people and resources together, thereby further catalyzing positive change.

If PIPs support people-powered services, and the latter contribute to a paradigm shift, as mentioned by Bauwens and Cottam, then we can also say that PIPs - as physical laboratories for social experimentation and innovation - can imply an important lever in the transition towards a partner or relational state.

Further understanding of PIPs and how they can be a valuable resource towards an actual societal paradigm shift requires further research. Design schools as such definitely have a key role to play in this. Essentially this is the direction in which several educational partners within the DESIS Public and Collaborative cluster⁶⁸ are working. Besides the ways in which they can be tools or platforms for change, also their political value and the more philosophical implications of the change they might bring about need to be investigated further.

That discussion will also fuel the debate and help to better understand the role and responsibility of designers, design schools, PIP stakeholders etc. within today’s and tomorrow’s society.

IMPLICATIONS FOR:

DESIGN PRACTICE

The collaboration with the Design Biennial of Liège (B) Reciprocity has been helpful and valuable in showcasing the possibilities provided by design schools as laboratories of action-oriented social innovation and the added value of such approaches/initiatives and collaborative settings of design for social innovation in the region. Although small in scale, the project received a lot of attention from the international press, thereby further contributing to a vivid discussion on the value of this kind of projects for society as well as the (sub)field(s) of contemporary design.

The collaboration with colleagues and projects within the P&C cluster through online meetings, conferences, papers and so on, has been stimulating, inspiring and informative in many ways. Especially also a more general reflection on the value of people-powered public services in society and the role of design schools as actors or catalysts in the field of social innovation has contributed significantly to a broader set of arguments pro and contra the adoption of certain roles by designers/design schools or other stakeholders within a project or specific phases.

DESIGN EDUCATION

In the Euregion the project has managed to establish a local example of design for social innovation, raising awareness for the field and its societal contribution. Also within the design schools, e.g. the Department of Product Design of MAD Faculty the project has been referenced as an important example of the direction in which didactical and research activities can be combined and reinforce one another, while also delivering value to the societal context of the school in the region. Furthermore, the project has been showcased in the DESIS Showcase at the International Cumulus Conference in Santiago, Chile, November 2012