"Co-Carts-Vehicles for the Community" was developed in 2020 by the architectural collective orizzontale during a practice-based residency programme of Lungomare. Through a series of public actions and discussions, the need to reactivate public space and create a proactive community in the different neighbourhoods of the city emerged, especially after the pandemic temporarily brought public space to a standstill.
The project was developed in collaboration with Friday For Futures, Officine Vispa (community and urban regeneration organisation) and Spazio 77 (community activist organisation). It aims to subvert the segregation of the multicentric city of Bolzano by realising community activation devices for public space that can be used by all. The Co-Carts are not an intervention for a specific place, but can be adapted to the whole urban area through a strong involvement of the various groups active and rooted in different parts of the city.
The Co-Carts are five pop-up bicycle trailers that, thanks to their forms and functions, transform urban space and promote values and needs identified in various participatory workshops with our local partners. They are placed at different locations and can be freely borrowed by the city's inhabitants for pop-up activities. The "Attivista Mobile" provides an infrastructure for open labs, discussions or a bicycle repair station; the "Acchiappasogni" serves as a container for materials and can be used, for example, as a flexible playground; "La Bravetta" has a portable table that can be utilised for workshops, sewing or food preparation and sharing; "Lo Strillone" helps to give residents a voice, but also to wake up the community-it serves as a democratic symbol and for bottom-up urban design. "Il Faro" brings light with it and shows the streets and the way, it illuminates places we don't normally see. It also offers space for small exhibitions or installations.
The Co-Carts not only populate public space during their journey and stay through their unusual appearance, but also stimulate our imagination as to how mobility in urban space could be thought of in a more multi-layered way and how spaces can be temporarily collectively redesigned. They can be understood as multifunctional social infrastructures to offer self-organised activities in a simple way, to create joy, a sense of belonging, new sensitivity for each other and for the environment, and non-commercial meeting places that have been stalled by the pandemic.

The Co-Carts are bottom-up vehicles that serve as community resource that stimulates shared- management, co-ownership and participation. Throughout the whole process the voices of those affected were involved, design knowledge and tools were shared. The Co-Carts were handed over to the partners that commit themselves to maintain and use them for their activities in the public space by involving others.

The multifunctional tools encourage subversive experimentation, alliances and provide a counterpoint to the specificity and individuality of the car. They stimulate collaboration, highlight the personalities of the people involved, shape new uses of collective space and can be set up and dismantled as needed.
For the shared use of the Co-Carts open, anti-racist and anti-fascist principles have been collectively established. They support inclusiveness, promote freedom of opinion, are multilingual, cross-cultural, not only creating a space but celebrating it.