Nex(t)o

Nex(t)o is a design research project rooted in the neighborhood of La Florida in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. It explores how hands-on co-making, shared cultural knowledge, and everyday collaboration can become powerful tools for social inclusion and grassroots urban transformation.

The project began with an investigation into public space as contested territory, looking at how marginalized urban areas often lack access to design processes, even though residents possess deep knowledge, craft, and care for their environment. Through fieldwork, mapping, and collaborative interventions, Nex(t)o shifted from a focus on speculative makerspaces to grounded, community-led design practices.

Collaborating with the non-profit organization Contorno Urbano in a local community garden, the project developed weekly co-making sessions where neighbors collaboratively built needed structures, repaired tools, and imagined new uses for shared spaces.

These activities became moments for listening, building trust, and observing how knowledge circulates through doing, a process grounded in the concept of ethnocognition, which recognizes cultural experience as a form of intelligence.

A small-scale tool, the manual brick press made from waste wood, was developed to explore how low-tech design can support sustainable construction and future collective building sessions.

At its core, Nex(t)o is less about producing things and more about creating space for inclusion, reflection, and dignity through design.

The next phase focuses on continuing work in Barcelona to refine the methodology and evaluate its adaptability. The long-term goal is to bring the same framework to different contexts where similar social dynamics offer space for building community-based design systems that are accessible, culturally grounded, and regenerative.

Nex(t)o is not a finished object; it’s an ongoing invitation to build, listen, and imagine futures together.

NEX(T)O is not about designing for people. It’s about designing with them.