Over the years, the organization of mega events has increasingly focused its interest on the design of the legacy of the event itself on the territory involved, from different points of view: spatial, economic, social, environmental. In particular, the large flow of visitors and actors involved in a mountain realm characterized by small realities to be protected and enhanced offers an interesting scenario on which to reflect and design in a multidisciplinary form. Key goals of the research project are focused on how to use the Winter Olympic Games 2026 challenge to re-design a long-term territorial strategy and new proximity systems, particularly for Valtellina area and Tirano city, in northern Italy. The research and didactic project will work on two different perspectives: first on the sustainable welcoming and diffuse welcoming of the different populations will visit and live temporarily the area, and second will be the involvement of the local stakeholders in the legacy project. Consequently, the second point of interest is involved students, from Politecnico di Milano and Torino, how to drive local development and enable stakeholders (even citizenship) to be part of this collective envisioning exercise and planning: focusing on topics such as public and sustainable mobility, new touristic offer (both heritage and cultural production), participatory governance. The macro-objective is the event legacy project and enhancement of the local area through the temporary adaptation of the existing heritage, the design of temporary, reversible, and eco-sustainable modules. In general, the attention paid to the assessment of the social and environmental impact of each aspect of the project responds to the objectives of the local stakeholders involved as partners in the activity. The city can be imagined as a sponge that opens during events and welcomes tourists and visitors so the positive charge enriches the fabric of the city and its inhabitants by slowly releasing the positive effects in the long term, or long wave concept: “[…]built with the intention of lasting, leaving marks, permanent effects on the urban fabric and the collective memory” (Amendola, 2010). This also applies to the regions in the mountains that are experiencing increasingly change, impacting both the global and local levels.
Ambra Borin – PhD candidate in Design at Politecnico di Milano. Her PhD research investigates the concept of proximity applied to urban and remote contexts, through the crystallization of short-term actions towards long-term change. Master’s degree in interior and Spatial Design (2018) at Politecnico di Milano with a thesis called “Oltre il Vuoto”, after a bachelor’s degree in industrial design (2015) at La Sapienza University in Rome. She is part of Polimi DESIS Lab (since 2018) to collaborate on research projects that involve communities activating co-design processes in a bottom-up perspective focus on spaces and services. She collaborates in miniFARB project from Design Department of Politecnico di Milano, titled Mnemosphere aims to investigate the different ways in which the identity and memory of places are designed and communicated through experiential spaces capable of stimulating emotions. Also, she collaborates as teaching assistant with the School of Design, POLI.design and ASP Programm of Politecnico di Milano and Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona. Laura Galluzzo – PhD in Design, she is Assistant Professor at the Design Department of Politecnico di Milano. She is operational manager of POLIMI DESIS Lab within the international DESIS Network (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability). Her research focus is on participative projects of (public) Spaces and Services. She has a specific expertise in the co-design of spaces as activators of collaborative actions, community hub, incubators of social practices. She has been a researcher in various national and international research programmes on this topic. She works on the relationship between Spaces and Services (S+S) design with a focus on temporary interventions, domestic and urban transformations. She is the author of The Legacies of Interiors and many others scientific articles.