Extending Dialogue beyond the Prison
The San Vittore Situated Vocabulary
Virginia Tassinari (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
Maria Maramotti (Politecnico di Milano)
Chiara Ligi (Politecnico di Milano)
Mariana Ciancia (Politecnico di Milano)
Aurora Chiaravalloti (Politecnico di Milano)
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Abstract
The Situated Action is part of San Vittore Situated Vocabulary, an ongoing participatory research project developed inside Milan's San Vittore Prison. During the PDC2026 Conference, the action is hosted at Open Casello (Milan), in close proximity to the prison, and it stages an "impossible dialogue": an indirect yet reciprocal exchange between the prison and the city, through a spatial and writing-based installation. The meanings of four key words emerged from co-design sessions with inmates, prison staff, and volunteers - Life/Death, Justice/Injustice, Responsibility, Fun/Boredom - are presented as fragmented textual constellations holding tension, silences, and contradictions embedded in everyday carcereal life. Participants are called to move through reading and informal conversation and are finally invited to live a personal response. Rather than seeking consensus, the action invites contributors to position themselves within unresolved tensions. The collected reflections will later be reintroduced inside the prison, extending the dialogue and positioning participatory design as a situated and agonistic practice that holds plurality and disagreement as conditions for coexistence.
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