Students from the DNMADE Social Innovation program at Lycée de l’Assomption in Bondy recently explored the future departmental hub for social innovation, located on the former IRD campus—a five-hectare site shaped by nearly 90 years of scientific history. Welcomed by Grégoire Lechat, project director, the students toured the buildings, greenhouses, parkland, and fallow areas in order to better understand the challenges involved in transforming the site into a hub for the social and solidarity economy.

This immersion enabled students to perceive the site as a territory in transition: a place suspended between heritage and future, rich in narratives, traces, and potential. A contextual introduction to the social and solidarity economy (SSE) offered them a situated perspective on contemporary challenges and on the role of the social designer as an agent of transformation—one who is attentive to uses, inclusion, and collective imaginaries.

The afternoon was dedicated to a series of participatory workshops designed by Sarah Princé and Isabelle Knote, design and applied arts teachers, in collaboration with the teaching team. Working in groups, students carried out a sensitive exploration of the site, analyzed its audiences and tensions, and sketched initial lines of action around three main themes: bringing the site’s memory to life, imagining welcoming and open-access devices, and designing inclusion and appropriation by young people. Through sensitive mapping, usage hypotheses, micro-prototypes, and mediation concepts, these projects initiated a collective and active reflection on how to transform a scientific campus into a shared, lively, and civic space.

This field trip marks the beginning of a project-based dynamic that will accompany students throughout the academic year, placing them at the heart of a contextualized social design approach that combines observation, responsibility, and creative practice.