Start Park is a project idea that emerged during the Climathon 2017 organized thanks to the collaboration between GreenApes and Codesign Toscana in Florence in 2017 at Impact HUB, where two multidisciplinary groups made up of professionals, municipal technicians, individual citizens and students challenged each other to propose, in 24 hours, a solution to mitigate the impact of climate change on the extreme weather events that the city of Florence will face in the near future. The idea of Start Park was born to answer the following question: how can we stimulate people to be aware of climate change and transform it into resilient actions? Starting from this question, the proposal emerged to create a public/private service that promotes the creation of widespread urban parks capable of boosting resilience, both domestic and urban, modular and digital.
IRIDRA Srl, environmental engineering studio in Florence, present at Climathon 2017 and Codesign Toscana organized a second event dedicated to formalize the design concept of Start Park in January 2019 with multidisciplinary experts and citizens. The event was a success, with 60 applications, of which 34 participants were selected divided into 4 thematic tables: architecture, engagement, strategy, communication. From this second activity Start Park emerges as a co-design process oriented towards awareness and mitigation of the effects of climate change starting from the creation of a resilient community protagonist of the co-design and redesign of urban green areas through the introduction of green and blue infrastructures.
The first opportunity to carry out the co-design process was in the second half of 2019 with the winning of II European call Designscapes | Design-enabled innovation in urban environments dedicated to the prototyping of processes, services and products aimed at social innovation in the urban context through the use of design methodologies and tools. The promoters- IRIDRA SrL and Codesign Toscana have created a collaborative network with CUT- Circuito Urbano Temporaneo and Municipality of Prato to create the first prototype of Start Park in a green area, in the Soccorso district of the city. The output of the process was a new plan of the park, co-designed by some citizens of the district and interested people from all Tuscany, enriched with new green and blue infrastructures, new furnishing elements and ideas for the creation of activities dedicated to making of the park a place of social gathering.
Currently a second replication of the process is being carried out in Lucca, in the Valgimigli park, with the support of the association, Lucca Creative Hub, in the role of activator of the territory, the Municipality of Lucca and the ASP Carlo del Prete who together co -manage the park. Also in this case, the replication was made possible thanks to the winning of the grant relating to the Designscapes III Call dedicated to scalability.
Start Park is
Start Park completed
