Design for social innovation is the emerging movement of the 21st century. Nonetheless, the socioeconomic impact of social design projects is conditional upon their multifaceted conception and upon their array of influence. In Turkey as elsewhere, sustainability is one of the main issues of social design projects in urban/rural territories. Generating innovation at the local level and for individual people also rely on design teams’ persistency on penetrating on local communities’ lives. This paper will focus on the design workshop series implemented on Gökçeada/ Imbros Island between 2014 and 2016. By expanding the problematics of sustainability in social design projects, the paper will propose a three years’ experience with academic purposes, based on benevolent participation and unfunded co-design. Finally, this paper will aim to contribute to the social design literature by illustrating a model of “designing on the spot” concept, for the sake of sustainable, long run design projects.

Social Innovation, Design for Development, Turkey