Urban regeneration is often invisible: hidden behind barriers, data, and inaccessible spaces. DIAPHRAGM was conceived as an interactive urban installation that transforms the silent ecological evolution of Bosco La Goccia in Milan into a visible and participatory public experience. Through modular rotating tiles made from recycled composite materials, environmental data becomes physical, readable, and open to interaction.
Question
What if the invisible processes of urban regeneration could become physically readable in public space?
What if a wall, instead of separating, could reveal the hidden transformation of a city?
Humap approach
For the YouRban residency, DIAPHRAGM - a wall to see through investigates the transformation of Bosco La Goccia in Milan: a former industrial area progressively reclaimed by spontaneous vegetation over decades, yet hidden for years behind physical barriers and inaccessible spaces.
Starting from this condition, the project reimagines the wall itself. The forest that remained invisible behind a barrier is symbolically brought back onto the surface: its main protagonists, the tree species and spontaneous vegetation shaping the ecosystem, become the building blocks of a new kind of wall. A wall that is no longer closed and separating, but permeable, interactive, and open to discovery.
Through the language of data visualization - using colors, symbols, tactile interaction, and digital tools - the project transforms ecological data into an accessible and engaging experience designed to stimulate curiosity, exploration, and participation across different ages and audiences.
Outcome
DIAPHRAGM is a urban temporary wall composed of rotating tiles made from recycled fiberglass composite. From a distance, the wall acts as a large-scale physical data visualization, where two different shades of green represent the percentage of land covered by spontaneous vegetation. Up close, visitors can flip the tiles to reveal symbols, ecological insights, and additional digital content accessible through QR codes, transforming environmental data into a playful and participatory experience based on movement, touch, and exploration.
Lightweight, modular, and reusable, the structure is designed to adapt to different urban contexts while promoting circularity, accessibility, and public engagement.
Developed in collaboration with WeMake and supported by YouRban, DIAPHRAGM combines recycled materials, urban data, interaction design, and speculative storytelling to rethink the role of barriers in contemporary cities, not as elements of separation, but as tools for collective awareness, interaction, curiosity and play.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Framework Programme
HORIZON-CL4-2023-HUMAN-01-53
Project Number: 101135997
