In Reggio Emilia, my hometown in Italy,  I worked for a while as part of a creative collective called Reggian*, born from a city council’s public call to engage creative talents in order to raise the citizen’s awareness about the urban and social changes of a post-industrial zone.

Santa Croce, the urban area where the project was focusing about, has a historical relevance for the city because it was one the Italian’s main industrial site for the production of war aircraft during the Second War World; the factory was called "Reggiane" from the city's name. This area of the city preserve not just dramatic and industrial memories but also community-life stories. During the 90s the factory shut down permanently and the neighbourhood loss his appealing due to the lack of jobs. Nowadays the area is mostly inhabited by migrants and elders. Santa Croce is ideologically and physically cut out of the city centre due to a series of urban interventions and various stereotypes. In the last 10 years thanks to a series of European fundings obtained through non-contractual tenders, the city council has created some ambitious projects of urban regeneration, in order to revive the image of the neighbourhood and attract new investors and businesses.

The collective was commissioned to create an exhibition in an art gallery of the CBD, in order to change citizen’s vision and sharing people and places through the storytelling of Santa Croce. We started thinking about the exhibition as a journey from the outside, how the media and citizen picture Santa Croce, to the inside, turning the visitor’s experience towards a more intimate experience, facing faces and memories of the neighbourhood. The main goal of the experience was to deconstructing the thoughts of visitors and give them a new vision, following three main steps: the available information, the projects and initiatives that are active on the territory and the design strategies that we, as a collective, have imagined creating a more friendly and lived environment.

The research was a key factor to raise our consciousness about Santa Croce, following different sources and meeting the locals. This journey would have been impossible without their close collaboration, sharing their lives and memories.

We wanted to start the exhibition giving a shake to the visitors and give them the opportunity to visualize of information that we discovered about Santa Croce. Dozens of semi-transparent panels were hanging from the ceiling creating a cloud in which the visitor could immerse himself, discovering facts and news regarding Santa Croce. The act of entering the cloud was also conceived as a rite of passage, through which the visitor becomes part of the story of the neighbourhood. 

In the second stage of the exhibition consisted of a series of cardboards totem displaying concepts and ideas for the area. Each of the 5 totems was theme-oriented following the keyword that guided our research.

We also used the VR to create another level of interaction and engagement with the visitor, wearing some viewers, like the Google Cardboards, to discover the interior of the industrial zone, going beyond the physical barriers that limiting the vision.

From the graphic design perspective wanted to give a sense of precariousness transformation. We used as the main colour of the exhibition an acid-yellow to remember the construction sites. Even the materials used in the show wanted to give a sense of transition like cardboards and plexiglass.

The exhibition brand identity wants to reflect the industrial memory of the neighbourhood, that’s why use the font from the old signage; but also underline is changing future, that’s why we made an extensive use of the asterisk even in the logo, both emphasizing the idea of loading and the sense of opening and inclusion.

After this exhibition, the collective was invited to participate and create another visitor experience for the European Photography Festival, where was create an audio path in private garden of a building where the visitors were guided by voices and fragments of memories from the local neighbors.