The Digital Archive as an Inclusive Tool for Knowledge Construction Through Design Practices

The paper offers a multi-focused reflection on the relation- ship between the evolution of the archive and the issues of access and knowledge acquisition. The authors recognize the digital archive as a resource that, from accessibility to information, through the empowerment of individuals, makes people autonomous in their own construction of knowledge. Briefly reconstructing the evolutionary events of the archive – from a private repository of documents to a platform for online content sharing – the research, through the presenta- tion of some case studies, highlights the main factors that have characterized the process of the progressive opening of the archive towards inclusion: the opening process on contents, collected and organized to reach extended audi- ences by increasing social, political and cultural impact, and the opening process on user experience on which the design discipline works through interaction and experience practices.