How to improve life in the city through design? How to communicate an idea? How to really understand each other? How to deal with languages? What can be participative approaches to design in the community? Maputo, Mozambique: with students at ENAV in Maputo and Theatre of the Oppressed Maputo.

The Design and the City project focuses on downtown Maputo, exploring with students of ENAV, design's social aspects and the power to transform through design.
It had an impact on the area and initiated an important debate around city, public space and social responsibility.
We developed work in 5 areas:

- Signalization and the City: Signalization of the numerous holes on the pavement, creating at the same time a visual map to all the facilities existing in the area;

- City and Garbage: Solving problems regarding garbage on the street and the lack of garbage points. Recycling the school's old computers.;

- Smelling the City: Addressing the problem of people urinating against trees;

- Public Spaces: Transforming empty spaces used to urinate and put garbage. How to create public space? How to create change? ;

- Social Games: Creating games on the pavement to create spaces of social exchange.  ;

– Safe City: Covering up electric cables on electric poles.;

–Type / Context / City: creating letters while playing with scale and context.

With Theatre of the Oppressed, projects addressed issues related to their work in the community, and the communication of important messages (prevention of AIDS, Cholera, Defending the rights of women and children, to name a few) all across the country (with its rich language diversity) through participative theatre and design technics, focusing on communciation and community. One example is the "Politician" project in which people were divided in groups and challenged to create a political party. They should defend something they believed in. It could be reasonable, or totally unreasonable, they could use fantasy and be ironic. By the end of the workshop they had to have a logo for their party, and be able to communicate their ideas through images and a prepared speech. They had to think how the candidate presented himself, and make a campaign photo.
The material they could use: tape.