From Charrette to Toronto meets Milano. The grand finale of Future Ways

Friday 19 June at Mediateca Santa Teresa marked the end of the Charrette of the Special Edition Future ways of living. Organized by Meet the Media Guru and the Institute, the urban design laboratory adopted a multidisciplinary approach to design 6 visions of the future on such thematic focuses as Energy & Economy; Education; Mobility; Food; Health and Well-being and Communication & Culture.

The participants in the project were 60 between practitioners,teachers, and students from all over the world supported by a dozen expert advisors from the Milan area. The goal of the Charrette was processing innovative solutions capable to leverage technology to improve life in the coming decade.

After ten days of hard work, the Charrette ended with the presentation of 6 projects on how life will be like in 2025 and the diploma awarding ceremony. All scenarios are characterised by two founding elements:sharing and connectivity. Be it applied to health with real time updated cloud on patients’ medical conditions, as envisaged by the Health&Wellness tram, or to creativity with the digital environment stimulating the synergy among practitioners and defining efficient strategies for promoting their own projects, as envisaged by the Energy team, the key trend for the next year will focus on sharing–knowledge,time and objects –matched with connectivity in real time.

As concerns urban mobility, the Charrette singled out the digital “dialogue” between local transportation and bike and car sharing systemas a solution to improve the life of those who live and work in big cities, as well as those who visit it for the first time. In the future not even education will be exempt from sharing: the Education team though of an international system open to adults and children toshare knowledge in a huge school that is at once diffused and always open. If it works with learning, why shouldn’t it also work in the professional world? The idea of the Communication team is (apparently) simple: Building a space to connect freelance services demand and offer using the social network model. What is the difference in comparison with traditional job seeking portals? The ability to dig deeper into the private personality of a candidate, collaborate with them in current projects and even exchange human resources or productive means.

The Charrette did not forget to focus on a key industry in our life, the food sector. How will we eat in ten years’ time? The Food team has tried to answer the question by offering a paradigm shift. Food will be more and more self-produced and shared in smaller communitiessuch as condominiums, neighbourhoods, workplaces. “Groceries” will be shopped bearing in mind of seasonal produce and consumption estimates in order to save food and money.

(A few pics from the last day of the Charrette are available in the gallery)

The 6 projects designed at the Charrette will be showcased onFriday 26 June at 6.30 pmduring the event Toronto meets Milano at Mediateca Santa Teresa, hosted by Maria Grazia Mattei andLuigi Ferrara. The grand finale of #FutureWays, open for registration at info@matteidigital.com, will also be an opportunity topreview the documentary that summarises the three weeks of Special Editionand stimulate a dialogue between Toronto and Milan, twin cities since 2003 and key hubs of the project. Special guests of the event will includeCristina Tajani, Milan City Councillor for Employment, Economic Development and Research and Michael Thompson, Chair of Economic Development and Culture Committee & Chair of Invest Toronto’s Board of Directors.