ORTI / APERTI Cittavivagaia

The municipal government in a mid-sized city in Sicily is overwhelmed to the point that it has neglected its public properties. The city’s residents lack civic engagement.

The decision is made to bring the two unacquainted parties together in the most open public area possible: the garden.

The initiative took a long-term approach with a series of steps: assess the state of the city’s properties; make the gardens functional first, then organise various activities to bring in visitors; and offer a fern-planting project in new micro-green spaces created in abandoned areas.  

The multidisciplinary project required expertise in various areas: architecture, urban planning, surveying and sociology. A number of partnerships and connections were formed with other social-sector actors as the initiative progressed. 

Graphic design and consistent communication played an important role in promoting the project at local level. The basic elements provided to all organisers for creating announcements were an extremely simple block typeface designed for titles and a set of figures and objects created using a pixel art template.