Leonardo Patane

By examining the specific case of the non-place represented by the train, my research shows how interior design strongly contributes to the creation of a socially aseptic environment. The standard train interior, responding to the function of motion, does not take into consideration passengers’ identities and the possibility to foster relations among them. Starting from these two aspects, this project proposes a transformation from a non-place to a place, through an internal redesign of the standard train car. The project is carried out through three different cars: Media, Greenhouse, and Core. In them, passengers can manifest their identities within the different environments that avoid homologation and standardization. Moreover, attention has been paid to passengers’ needs of privacy, comfort, and social relations by creating intimate spaces, by increasing their personal space and consequently their sense of comfort, and by proposing gathering areas where they can meet and interact with one another. These solutions allow passengers to consider the journey not as a simple connection from point A to point B, but as a bundle of possible connections that may exist in the interior place of the car and that are expressed in the experience of their travel.