ETHNOGRAPHIC OBSERVATORY OF DESIGN AND SOCIAL INNOVATION IN RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL.

ANASTASSAKIS, ZOY ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, ESCOLA SUPERIOR DE DESENHO INDUSTRIAL, UNIVERSIDADE DO ESTADO DO RIO DE JANEIRO (ESDI/UERJ) zoy@esdi.uerj.br

ABSTRACT
This article presents the work carried out by the Ethnographic Observatory of Design and Social Innovation in Rio de Janeiro, a university extension project carried out at the School of Industrial Design at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (ESDI / UERJ), Brazil. Organized from an interdisciplinary perspective between design and anthropology, the project assumes the city of Rio de Janeiro as theme and site of work, traversed, at the present moment, by the preparation of two major sporting events scheduled for 2014 and 2016. This report presents and discusses the activities of the Observatory in the downtown area, focusing on considerations about the experimentations of modes of observation, description, imagination and engagement (Ingold 2000 and 2011), as tested by us throughout the process.

also expands, in many ways, towards the reconfiguration of the ways in which both the government and civil society perceive and imagine the city. In addition to the preparations for FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games, this process includes a series of other initiatives involving government projects for 'requalification ' of the port area, and 'pacification' of the slums, and also a speculative process that revolves around a hyper-valuation of properties in the city, and a super price inflation in services and trade in general. In order to create an environment for systematic observation of this 'transformation process' which traverses the city of Rio de Janeiro, the School of Industrial Design at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (ESDI / UERJ) has created the "Ethnographic Observatory of Design and Social Innovation in Rio de Janeiro, " a university extension project that aims to bring to the university the discussions involving the city, at the same time that it returns to it the reconfigured issues, thereby causing an expansion of dialogue between city, university and society, as the ultimate goal of the university extension. The project - which began in 2012 and has continued its activities during 2013 assumed the city of Rio de Janeiro as object and field of work, and through an interdisciplinary perspective articulated between design and anthropology, experimented combining practices and modes of knowledge production from the two disciplines in order to conjugate observation, movement, description and imagination of places and regions (Ingold 2000 and 2011), aiming to bring out and make visible the processes of transformation experienced in the urban environment in question, and to provoke discussions about the possible ways of life in the city, either conforming alternative visions and/or projections (Disalvo 2009) at the present moment or in the near future (Hunt 2011). In this article, we seek to present the work of the 1

INTRODUCTION
In the year 2014 the twentieth edition of FIFA World Cup will take place in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro is among the twelve cities selected to host the games, and also two years after, in 2016, it will also host the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The imminence of these two major sporting events has imposed to the city a schedule of construction works that aims to prepare it to receive the competitions and all their adjacent activities. This agenda has contributed to the acceleration of the process of transformation of the urban environment, which, besides involving more specifically the works of infrastructure necessary for the realization of the events,
Participatory Innovation Conference 2013, Lahti, Finland

www.pin-c2013.org/

Observatory in its initial stage, and discuss thereafter, the developments that will be explored in the future. So the article is, first and foremost, the report of an interdisciplinary project between design and anthropology, conducted in a design school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, assuming the city, according to the terms of Ingold (2000 and 2011), at the same time as end and means of work. With our participation in PINC 2013, we expect to exchange experiences with other researchers exploring the disciplinary interaction between design and anthropology, as well as with those that discuss how design and anthropology conjugated can positively affect the processes of social innovation, defined here according to the terms proposed by the Conference, that is, as innovations that are social both in their means and their ends, and that include "changes in the ways of thinking: changes in mental models and institutional and social norms that increase the renewal ability of society; novel solutions to social problems with societal value, or as new ideas that work in meeting social goals" (PINC 2013).

(2005: 04). According to this approach to innovation, designers must be committed to "participation in social innovation" (Halse, Brandt, Clark, Binder 2010: 14), switching "attention from science-dominated futures to social fictions in which imagined new contexts enrich an otherwise familiar world "(Thackara, 2005: 219). Also Gunn and Donovan (2012), Clarke (2010) and Lenskjold (2011) highlight the critical potential of this emerging field, design anthropology, that, combining observation and interpretation with collaboration, intervention and co-creation, should enable a new way to engage with social life, strongly committed to emerging situations and with a dialogic engagement with the persons involved. Thus, beyond the question of engagement with concrete issues of social life (Ingold 2011; Gunn, Donovan 2012), what becomes central, here, is the effort to create alternative forms of description, projection and imagination, that seek both to make visible the emerging social practices, and to provoke alternative visions (Hunt 2011) and/or projections (Disalvo 2009), so that future consequences associated with the issues at stake could become apparent. So it is about facing the challenge of seeking ways of engaging and ways of describing emerging processes and non-fixed categories (Gunn, Donovan 2012), coupled with experimentation around the creation of alternative visions (Hunt 2011, Reyes 2010) and future projections (Disalvo 2009). Something close to what in the "Design Anthropological Innovation Model Manifesto" is understood as "rehearsing the future" (Halse, Brandt, Clark, Binder 2010): "it collapses the front end and back end of the design process, in that we already from the very beginning do what is usually in the end: rehearsing the relationships and practices that follow with a new artifact" (idem: 15). These formulations tell us of a change in the role of designers in society, towards the emergence of a new way of doing design, understood as active participation in society, it could also be described as a web of project networks (Manzini 2008: 98). In this context arises the idea of an 'exploratory design' (Halse, Brandt, Clark, Binder 2010: 14), in which concrete interactions must be taken, above all, as "the starting point for the design work" (idem). Starting from the reference given above, when creating the project, we turned our attention more carefully to the proposals made by Ingold (2000 and 2011) in order to experiment around them, and in the form of a practical exercise, the combination of anthropological approaches and design. In this author we have found return in relation to the discussion of new description matrices, including one that had enough resonance with the experience we were looking for, namely a graphic anthropology (2011). Above all, what became fundamental was his proposition of understanding the categories of place and region, around which we organized our work.
www.pin-c2013.org/

LITERATURE AND THEORY

From propositions made by Ingold (2000 and 2011) and Gunn (2009 and 2012) for a redirection of the anthropological practice, toward its combination with other modes of knowledge production - such as art, architecture and design-conventionally closer to the propositional exercise of changing the world; an interdisciplinary approach is outlined on the one hand, to enable anthropology to engage more creatively with concrete issues of living in the world, and on the other, simultaneously, to reinforce the commitment of art, design and architecture with a deep and nuanced understanding of the ways of life on which they focus their activities, a commitment that often ends up being neglected by artists, architects and designers. These proposals have outlined new directions for interdisciplinarity, a discussion that has become prominent in anthropology (Rabinow and Marcus 2008, Strathern 2005, Velho 2010) while also expanding amid design (Clarke 2011; Frascara 2002; Halse, Brandt, Clark, Binder 2010). According to these formulations, designers, social scientists, and anthropologists, should reaffirm their commitment towards engagement in the world - understood, according to Ingold (2011), as condition for the legitimacy of scientific practice. Considering such framework from the perspective of design, Clarke proposes that the shift towards cultural and social sensitivity brings with it "the capacity to generate effective social innovation" (2011: 11). Indicating thus, the latent potential that such a combination between design and anthropology entails towards an effective contribution in processes of social innovation - understood here, more broadly, as in the terms of John Thackara, that is less driven by science fiction and, otherly, more inspired by social fiction 2

Participatory Innovation Conference 2013, Lahti, Finland

In this perspective, an investigation about a place must be, above all, an inquiry made in one place, and from that place, around observation paths that seek to follow the inhabitants of the region in their moving through the various places along which they lead their lives. Thus, a research project on a particular place is, first and foremost, an exercise held in the place, and in dialogue with those who live there. This formulation leads to the understanding that such an experiment should not take the form of a research project, but rather that of university extension, articulated with teaching and research, to create opportunities for interaction between the university environment and the society in which it belongs.

Figure 1: exhibit at the central campus of the university.

DATA AND METHODS

The project team, consisting of myself, and four undergraduate students and a newly graduate product designer, had the support of students of the discipline "Means and Methods of Project Representation", who engaged in the work, as well as other five students, advised by me in their projects of completion of course, that addressed issues related to the Observatory. All students participated in readings, fieldwork and prospective exercises, while the project team carried out such activities, and also gathered and analyzed the material produced to prepare two exhibits, two presentations at scientific events and one workshop. The first exhibit was held in an extension fair at the central campus of the university (Figure 1) and the second at the school, gave sequence to a workshop with external participants (Figure 2), after which we exhibited the results, this time in the outer walls of ESDI (Figure 3), located in the heart of the downtown area. As to events, we participated in a roundtable organized by Nomad University1, entitled "Disincubating creativity in the metropolis", and in a showcase of the network DESIS (Design of Service and Social Innovation), coordinated by Professor Ezio Manzini, from Politecnico di Milano (Italy), with local organization by Professor Carla Cipolla, from the Program of Production Engineering at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Figure 2: workshop with external participants.

Figure 3: exhibit of visions, projections and scenarios on the wall of ESDI.

To start the work, I asked students to represent the school and its surroundings graphically, and by memory. The support for this representation should be a space of the school not previously designated for such purpose (Figure 4). By observing the drawings together, we discussed what each of us could realize, what stories and memories they evoked.

The Nomad University (Universidade Nmade) is a network of movements composed of nuclei, research groups, militants of popular preparatory courses, cultural movements, magazines and artists, gathered in order to establish a common agenda around issues related to the challenges of the 'change' that is currently traversing Brazil.

Figure 4: drawing of the region surrounding the school, done by students.

Next I suggested we tried to overlap the drawings (Figure 5) on the satellite view provided by Google 3

Participatory Innovation Conference 2013, Lahti, Finland

www.pin-c2013.org/

Maps where the region could be seen (Figure 6), seeking to find at least some point of connection between the overlapping layers on transparency.

sought to extract key issues that would feed a development process with visions of alternative scenarios (Hunt 2011), as well as projections about future consequences (Disalvo 2009) in relation to life in the places where we performed our field.

Figure 5: overlapping of drawing on photography of Google Earth.

While observing the cut proposed by the tool, we realized that the image which was conformed at the first moment of search - when typing the address of the school - comprised a region large enough to display various possibilities for fieldwork, and at the same time, with an extension that could easily be walked, facilitating the moving between field and school.

Figure 7: work in classroom.

These were mainly imagination exercises seeking to prospect other visions and/or projections about the places (Figure 8), and from the issues perceived there, configure communication devices to forge new discussions in field. At this point, we experienced various means and methods of representation by choosing those that facilitated communicating our visions and projections that we wanted to take to the field so that passersby and other inhabitants of the region could interfere in them, creating thus, more discussion and raising, again, other issues.

Figure 6: image of Google Maps showing ESDI and its surroundings.

At this point, we were developing the same activities among students in the classroom, and with the project team, in our weekly meetings. From the exercise with the drawings and Google Maps, we began the fieldwork that would happen in the form of a mapping (Ingold 2000: 219-242), which did not mean, at that moment, that we were committed to go into the field seeking to collect data to make any map at a future moment. Mapping the area around the school meant only following the pathways (idem) that would take us form one place (idem: 219, 2011: 145-155) to another, an environmentally situated activity that, in setting us moving, intended to cause the unveiling of a field of relationships and stories, which, for Ingold, is what properly constitutes a place. We set out for the mapping divided into groups, each choosing a place from where to start a series of observation pathways. At every encounter in the classroom, we shared what had been observed in the field and commented on the produced drawings, notes, photographs and narratives. While coming and going to fieldwork, we initiated a process of analysis inspired by procedures from strategic design (Figure 7), mainly in its Italian matrix (Politecnico di Milano), some of them updated by Brazilian researchers, as Paulo Reyes (2010). We then,

Figure 8: some visions of future scenarios developed by students, on display at the school wall.

EVALUATION OF DATA
By working in the field, bringing and returning renewed questions to it, was, then, the way in which we rehearsed to start this experiment that took place at the region around which we gathered as a group involved in the training exercise to act in design. In our comings and goings to field, we have rehearsed several ways to record what was being observed. However, students had an easier time working with drawings, diagrams and photos than with verbal and textual records. During the classes, then, we have

Participatory Innovation Conference 2013, Lahti, Finland

www.pin-c2013.org/

discussed the material produced in the field by each group, to gradually initiate a process of analysis that sought to extract from the data latent issues that could guide the development of imagination exercises of alternative and/or future visions. At that moment, we made use of some analytical strategies belonging to strategic design, according to the version of Reyes, which formalizes a "systemic and dynamic model of strategic design method applied to the territory" (2010: 09), where images play a key role in the operationalization of the processes of construction of imagined scenarios. This model was useful, mostly, in regard to the way the analysis of images is articulated, towards a gradual process of conceptualization, that starting from concrete devices (images) suggests a path that follows to an exercise of organizing images by similarity of semantic field (idem: 10), continuing a process of reorganization and synthesis into concepts which are then rearranged in a type of SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity and threat) graph that functions, here, only as facilitator for analysis of categories synthesized from the analysis of fieldwork. Focusing on concepts perceived as strengths and opportunities, we built polarity graphs (idem: 11), consisting of the main concepts from the analysis and its semantic oppositions. In this process, such a graph serves to expand the images associated with the first concepts, expansion that aims to stimulate the next stages of the exercise of construction of visions and projections of alternative and/or future scenarios. The scenarios, both of a prescriptive and predictive nature in terms of Margolin (apud Lenskjold 2011), were generated from the combination of two or more concepts in the polarity graph, and, once formulated, they were described in small verbal narratives that guided the process of creating visual narratives. Next, we started to sketch graphically what we intended to exhibit on the school wall, so that we could, through this exhibit, engage in dialogues with inhabitants and passersby in the region.

the beginning of the work, organized in a more or less linear and cumulative way, we reconducted the activities, according to the evaluations made during the periods of preparation of presentations, in which we worked intensively. The interactions with those who attended the workshop, presentations and exhibitions, were crucial moments of work, in that it was at the events, in a strict sense, that the exercise of university extension happened towards the city and society. Always taking into account the need to prepare for these events so that the interactions could happen easily, quickly and playfully, we tested different strategies to narrate, from textual, visual and expographic elements, what we had perceived on the field, but always leaving room for other readings to arise, and especially debates that might even detract from the analytical axes we had been following. In this sense, we believe that the visions and projections shaped by us should not represent the result of the work process, but rather part of it, that is, they should be understood mainly as operative images (Halse, Brandt, Clark, Binder 2010: 20), or triggers which had value in facilitating interactions between us and those living in the places represented therein. It was, then, experimentation around means and methods of description and imagination that were only fully realized when taken in conjunction with the search for ways of engagement (Gunn and Donovan 2012). Thus, we sought to explore alternative ways to practice design, understood here as an open-ended design practice (idem) or as a critical practice (Lenskjold 2011), that did not aim at the development of design projects, understood in a strict sense, but rather articulation of the prospective exercise, typical of design processes, towards the practice of observation and description in depth, proper of anthropology, also understood comprehensively from the perspective of Ingold, as a practical observation based in participatory dialogue, and therefore, an inquisitive way of inhabiting the world.

DISCUSSIONS RESULTS
While this work process was going on with students in the classroom, the team of the Observatory dedicated to preparing two exhibits, one workshop and two presentations at scientific events, occasions in which we had the opportunity to expose the partial results of the work done together with the students, at the very moment it happened. These presentations were fundamental to the analytical and critical processing of what we had been experiencing, functioning as key situations in which we were forced to synthesize and communicate what was being done, and also to reevaluate the work and reconsider the following steps, thereafter. So, while we were conducting the activities proposed at
Participatory Innovation Conference 2013, Lahti, Finland

Throughout the work, we, the team of the Observatory, realized that all our activities were fed, most of all, by the different instances of dialogues that were being provoked by each one of them. Thus, it was possible to understand that we were involved in a process that was articulated in-between creating devices that provoked new possibilities of debate, among us, inside the university, and with the places, outside. In this sense, soon it was possible to realize we were involved in a process that alternated observation, description, discussion and imagination of places, in an investigative and propositional exercise about the observed and also imagined places, but which mainly happened in one place, and around the region where this place was located.

www.pin-c2013.org/

Throughout this period of work, performed in 2012, we went and returned to the field numerous times, bringing observations and returning there with provocations that could give rise to dialogues with the inhabitants and passersby, in the several places we had been to. In this process, we have tested several strategies to foster an environment to provoke (Lenskjold 2011) dialogue in field, which was facilitated by the artifacts created by us. However, we realized that, rather than creating interventions that instigated passersby on the issues we would like to debate, it was necessary to be there on the street, next to the material that would eventually support our involvement in processes of communication. Thus, we understand that the probable future developments of the project involve research and experimentation on new ways of being into field, where the processes of observation, movement, description and imagination are combined in the service of creating environments of dialogic engagement between us and all the other inhabitants with whom we share places, such as these in the central region of Rio de Janeiro. It is through these dialogical instances that we intend to, ultimately, take part in processes of social innovation and imagination (Ingold, 2000) to conform other perspectives from which to perceive and imagine the city and the possible forms of life for the city. In addition, we have also found in Clarke (2011), Disalvo (2009), Gunn and Donovan (2012) and Lenskjold (2011), and in references provided by them, sources that indicate possible paths through which we can continue experimenting with different kinds of critical engagement via design and anthropology.

https://maps.google.com.br/, website visited on February 10, 2013. Bibliography: Clarke, A. (Ed.). Design Anthropology. Object culture in the 21st Century. Wien: Springer-Verlag, 2011. Frascara, J. (Ed.). Design and the social sciences: making connections. Taylor & Francis, 2002. Gunn, W., Donovan, J. (Eds.). Design and anthropology. Surrey and Burlington: Ashgate, 2012. Gunn, W. (Ed.). Fieldnotes and sketchbooks: challenging the boundaries between descriptions and processes of describing. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH, 2009. Halse, J., Brandt, E., Clark, B., Binder, T. (Eds.). Rehearsing the future. Copenhagen: The Danish Design School Press, 2010. Hunt, J. Prototyping the social: temporality and speculative futures at the intersection of design and culture, in Clarke, A. J. (Ed.). Design Anthropology. Object culture in the 21st Century. Viena: SpringerVerlag, 2011, pp. 33-44. Ingold, T. Being Alive: essays on movement, knowledge and description. London and New York: Routledge, 2011. Ingold, T. The Perception of the Environment: essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Lenskjold, T. U. Accounts for a critical artefacts approach to design anthropology, in Nordic Design Research Conference, Helsinki, 2011, 09p. Manzini, E. Design para a inovao social e sustentabilidade: comunidades criativas, organizaes colaborativas e novas redes projetuais. (Design for social innovation and sustainability: creative communities, collaborative organizations and new project webs.) Rio de Janeiro: E-Papers, 2008. Rabinow, P., Marcus, G. (with J.D. Faubion and T. Rees). Designs for an anthropology of the contemporary. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Reyes, P. Construo de cenrios em design: o papel da imagem e do tempo. (Construction of scenarios in design: the role of image and time) Article presented at the 9o Congresso Brasileiro de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento em Design (P&D Design). So Paulo, 2010. Strathern, M. Experiments in interdisciplinarity, Social Anthropology, 13(1), 2005, p. 75-90. Thackara, J. In the bubble: designing in a complex world. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press, 2005. Velho, O. Os novos sentidos da interdisciplinaridade (The new meanings of interdisciplinarity), Mana, 16(1). Rio de Janeiro, 2010, pp. 213-226.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The State University of Rio de Janeiro has enabled the project, ensuring that part of my workload was allocated for its development. The project team, under my coordination, was constituted by designer Roberta Guizan and the students Ana Clara Tito, Celina Kuschnir, Isis Maria and Jonathan Nunes, in collaboration with Aline Araujo. Also, the students of the discipline "Means and methods of project representation" as well as my advisees for the completion of course project. The designer and researcher at ESDI, Barbara Szaniecki, has provided substantive bibliographic references on social cartography and collaborative mapping. The Study Group on Design and Social Innovation (GEDAIS) was where the theoretical and methodological contributions tested by the Observatory could be discussed and analyzed, before and during the fieldwork.

REFERENCES
Links:

Participatory Innovation Conference 2013, Lahti, Finland

www.pin-c2013.org/