Cultural spatial synergies. Interactive and digital community maps as an enabling tool for restorative design

This paper explores the contribution of design in identifying an accessible, open, and expandable tool capable of communicating and promoting local territories through the enhancement of tangible and intangible heritage, while actively involving communities in the support of design processes. Participatory and co-design approaches are highlighted as effective practices to engage local actors in the development of place-based strategies for heritage enhancement. Within this perspective, design assumes a restorative role (Antonelli, 2019), reinforcing the relationship between people and place, fostering awareness of their interdependence, and enabling synergies between local knowledge and established design methodologies for collaboration and social cooperation toward territorial enhancement (Bujdosó, 2019; Villari, 2012). The investigation into communicative tools and scalable processes for the enhancement of heritage across different types of territories is grounded in a pilot study conducted in a rural inner area of Italy. This area, characterised by natural landscapes, productive agricultural activity, and low population density, serves both as a field of inquiry and a complex design context. Initial desk research and fieldwork led to only partial identification of natural, architectural, and community-based heritage. It was through the identification of “entry keys”—places and people that offer access to primary or secondary sources, understood as “narrative carriers” (Studio Azzurro et al., 2011)—that a deeper understanding of implicit and explicit heritage narratives and traces emerged (Fagnoni, 2018, p. 17). Among the tools promoted by design for territorial contexts, the community map (Filippi et al., 2022; Menzardi, 2021) stands out as a device for translating collective knowledge and local specificities into visual and descriptive representations. These maps act as dynamic archives that document local identity and memory while prompting reflection on past, present, and future transformations. The research team identified the interactive digital community map as an enabling infrastructure for surfacing and preserving a plurality of traces — those perceptible signs of what remains over time [...] the core of cultural heritage, layered and identity-bearing for a community and its territory (Fagnoni, 2018). As an open tool, the digital community map supports multimodal communication systems and fosters shared storytelling practices that overcome the limitations of static paper-based mapping. It is specifically designed to engage non-expert audiences through the collaborative sharing of multimedia content.