Co-design worshops

During the first half of 2017, several participation-based co-designed workshops have been launched, where members of the public have been able to express their proposals for these premises.
This excellent involvement on the part of the general public has simply confirmed that co-designing projects is fundamental in order to be inclusive and enrich the projects; that the five sector-based fields that the MARES project is working on strongly affect both the design of premises and the urbanisation of the city; that the wealth of the diverse profiles helps to construct a project from many different viewpoints; and that the project and its innovative spirit is helping to involve many people and to work collectively between what is regional and what is sector-based.
How can we understand the design for reclaiming a location, from the viewpoint of eco-mobility, healthy eating, circular recycling, energy efficiency and caring for the environment? How can we make the design of the four MARES locations resilient? How can we co-design four urban and architectural projects in four different districts of the city of Madrid with a multitude of different partners involved?
This is the process followed by the MARES project in Madrid in its co-design workshops, using a co-production design methodology developed by the partners in the project: Vivero de Iniciativas Ciudadanas (Incubator for Citizens’ Initiatives), Estudio SIC (architecture studio) and Todo por la Praxis (Let’s be Practical) project.

The development of four public premises in these four districts, where many activities will be promoted in the area of the ​​Social and Solidarity-based Economy, is one of the main transformation-orientated projects to be launched by MARES Madrid.
Buildings and public spaces that were in disuse will be refurbished and made available to the local population. Each area, called MAR (or “SEA”), will serve as a laboratory of knowledge and production for promoting economic initiatives linked to the European Social Survey (ESS). This is not just a simple refurbishment process, since the design of these locations has been done on a collaborative basis, attempting to gather together and identify the needs that must be satisfied, the actions that could be accommodated and the potential offered by the premises.
Thus, each “MAR” will have areas for group-based learning, cooperation work, counselling and mentoring, community-based care and production in common. Linked to sectorial innovation in the city and the local population resident there, the MARES locations will be facilitators and catalysts for robust urban processes.
The cross-sectional nature of the knowledge produced by MARES has therefore been taken into account in the design of each “SEA”: areas for ecomobility, provision of rooms and infrastructure for cooking, reclaiming, storing and recycling in order to produce clean energy and to look after ourselves while we are working.
For example, the residents involved in the co-design workshops have shown a special interest in energy efficiency, so the architecture projects for the four SEAS have included a series of resources and devices that will produce an energy saving of 50% in the SEA of Mobility (Vallecas) and in the SEA of Recycling (Vicálvaro), as well as a 25% savings in the Food SEA (Villaverde) and 20% in the Energy SEA (City Centre).
Together, the four MARES premises, with more than 2,500m² of interior surface area and 3,094m² of outdoor space, will also be able to produce an estimated photovoltaic output of 42kW and 60.00kW/h/year.

As a mechanism of innovation in the process, a tool has been developed called Idea Follow-Up Indicators (ISIs in its Spanish acronym), which outlines the ideas that have been presented and worked on in the different co-design workshops, right from start to finish. Through this tool, residents themselves can monitor what point their idea or proposal has reached and where in the documentation, plans, photos, etc. it has been linked to the design, rehabilitation, remodelling and/or construction projects of the four MARES spaces.