ReCITYing
Diffusion of an urban recycling culture through design-oriented practices
The Challenge
Many cities across Europe contain abandoned or underused spaces — empty buildings, derelict heritage, forgotten industrial zones, or rural enclaves disconnected from the urban fabric. These “leftover” areas often carry social, environmental, and cultural potential but lack visibility, access, and purpose.
ReCITYing addresses three intertwined priorities:
–Transnational Knowledge Exchange – Building a European network of practice and learning around temporary reuse, co‑design, and artistic regeneration.
–Social Inclusion & Co‑Creation – Involving communities, young creatives, and local stakeholders to reimagine and reclaim these spaces.
–Sustainability & Circularity – Promoting the reuse of materials, especially agricultural by-products, for ecological design interventions.
Our Solution
ReCITYing proposes a way to bring life back to abandoned or underused places by treating temporary reuse as an active design method rather than a stopgap solution. The project creates spaces where architects, designers, artists, local communities, policymakers, and young creatives work side by side to reimagine neglected urban and rural environments. This collaborative process emphasizes social inclusion, ensuring that diverse voices and experiences shape how each site evolves.
At the core of the solution is a commitment to sustainability. ReCITYing makes extensive use of agricultural and locally available waste materials, transforming them into resources for design and construction. This approach not only lowers environmental impact but also strengthens the link between ecological cycles and cultural production. The project also operates as a European knowledge network, allowing cities to exchange tools, skills, and methods for regenerative urban transformation. Through research-by-design, each intervention becomes an opportunity to understand the risks, values, and potentials of forgotten spaces, always with an emphasis on equitable access, gender sensitivity, and cultural diversity.
Type of Project
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Creative Europe programme under the project number 101132146.
Project Output
ReCITYing generates visible and lasting results in the form of workshops, installations, prototypes, and transnational exchanges. Creative workshops bring together students, local residents, and professionals to experiment with agricultural by-products as design material, often working directly in peri-urban or rural sites. These encounters lead to the construction of public installations—such as land-art interventions in places like the Parc Agrari in Barcelona—that transform vacant land into shared cultural spaces.
As the project progresses, participants develop a range of design prototypes, from lightweight structures to everyday objects such as lamps, seating, or containers, all demonstrating the potential of circular design. Each participating city contributes its own case study, revealing how different contexts respond to similar challenges and how temporary reuse can adapt to local needs. Alongside these built outcomes, ReCITYing hosts international events, mobility programs, and collaborative research sessions that strengthen connections between European institutions and creative communities. The resulting documentation, methods, and design explorations form a growing body of knowledge that supports more sustainable and inclusive strategies for regenerating cities.
The Project
ReCITYing is a European initiative that reimagines how cities can regenerate unused, abandoned, or inaccessible spaces by transforming them into creative, open, and socially inclusive environments. The project frames temporary reuse not as a provisional fix but as an active design practice capable of generating cultural value, ecological awareness, and new forms of urban belonging.
Through a transnational network of institutions, cities, and creative communities, ReCITYing promotes a shared methodology that combines research-by-design, artistic experimentation, and community co-creation. Across four pilot cities—Genoa, Barcelona, Hannover, and Maribor—participants explore how leftover spaces, rural voids, disused industrial areas, and vacant heritage can become catalysts for collective imagination and environmental responsibility.
By mobilising architecture, arts, and design, the project fosters a European culture of urban recycling, enabling new cycles of meaning to emerge from spaces that have lost their original function and opening paths for more equitable, circular, and culturally vibrant futures.
Our Contribution
IAAC contributes to ReCITYing by:
- Piloting the Barcelona case study, centred on the Parc Agrari del Llobregat, a unique agricultural landscape facing pressures of rural abandonment and loss of productive identity. IAAC explores how land-art interventions, lightweight structures, and circular-material prototypes can activate rural voids while strengthening links between food systems, cultural practices, and metropolitan life.
- Developing research-by-design methodologies, enabling young creatives and cultural practitioners to test new spatial strategies using agricultural by-products and locally available waste materials.
- Facilitating transnational learning, sharing digital fabrication tools, circular design methods, and participatory design approaches with partner institutions and visiting professionals.
- Leading co-creation workshops and public installations, promoting active involvement of farmers, residents, students, and local associations in shaping the temporary reuse of agricultural heritage.
- Contributing to the European knowledge platform, documenting processes, tools, and prototypes to inspire other cities and communities facing similar challenges of rural-urban transition, vacancy, and landscape stewardship.
Through these actions IAAC reinforces the central ambition of ReCITYing: to cultivate a regenerative culture capable of reconnecting ecological cycles, social inclusion, and contemporary design practices.
Who is it for?
ReCITYing is designed for a diverse constellation of actors who play a role in shaping the future of cities and territorial landscapes:
- Young creatives in architecture, design, urbanism, and the arts seeking hands-on experience with temporary reuse, co-design, and circular material experimentation.
- Local communities, residents, and civic associations who are directly engaged in reclaiming unused buildings, rural enclaves, or industrial zones.
- Policymakers and municipal authorities working on urban regeneration, cultural planning, sustainability policies, and strategies for vacant or underused spaces.
- Cultural organisations, social enterprises, and grassroots initiatives committed to participatory processes, community development, and ecological transition.
- Researchers, educators, and institutions interested in cross-European collaboration, research-by-design, and new pedagogies around urban recycling.
- Artists and performers who explore space as a social, cultural, and experiential medium and contribute to the activation of neglected sites.
By connecting these groups, ReCITYing builds a vibrant European network capable of transforming forgotten environments into shared cultural infrastructures and nurturing a more inclusive and sustainable urban future.
