Between 2025 and 2026, the Franco Galato Civic Library in Gorgonzola will acquire new spaces following the redevelopment of the Cà Busca building. The aim of the redevelopment is the preservation of the building and the innovation of Cà Busca as a cultural incubator. Following the approval of the redevelopment of the building, the municipal administration decided to involve the citizens, particularly the current and future users of the library, in the participatory design of the new functions and activities that the new library spaces will be able to host.

The co-design process carried out by the Polimi DESIS Lab and the Municipal Administration was structured in four macro-phases, each of which yielded an output useful for the subsequent phases:

1) Sharing of the methodology and first mapping at different levels of the ‘as is’ offer;

2) Meeting open to all citizens in which the co-design process was presented and the ‘as is’ mapping was expanded with citizens' wishes;

3) Five workshops with different target groups to define concepts and design ideas for the implementation of new activities, functions and services in the library spaces;

4) Convergence of the results of the different workshops and return of a project brief to be handed over to the managers in charge of designing the library spaces.

The methodology followed a participatory approach aimed at identifying the needs and desires of future users. During the co-design activities, design tools such as offer maps and moodboards were used to stimulate the creative process. This led all groups to express their preferences and generate coherent and meaningful visual outputs. From these outputs, a synthesis was carried out to inspire the next design phase, which will concern the spaces of the new library in Ca' Busca. This synthesis identified four meta-spaces: the garden, the co-smart-working space, the DIY space and the multifunctional space.

The results collected and processed by the co-design activities were presented to the municipal administration and to the architectural firm that will design the interiors of the new library spaces.