This Master’s studio in Social Design investigated the concept of slack —understood as underutilised or vacant space that holds untapped human or social capital (Dittmar, 2020). Such spaces, often overlooked in dominant urban narratives, present opportunities for alternative forms of public life, cultural production, and grassroots spatial agency.

Grounded in theoretical frameworks from Florida’s ‘creative capital’ to Foucault’s ‘heterotopia’ and Campkin’s ‘nocturnal queer geographies’, the studio explored how marginal or residual urban spaces might be reimagined as sites of resistance, habitability, and collective meaning-making. Responding to the decline of pluralistic public space and the increasing precarity of the creative economy, the studio examined how social design can engage critically with the ‘cracks’ in existing structures — amplifying their potential rather than erasing their difference.

Through situated research and experimental design, students developed strategies for working within these spaces, cultivating new approaches to community-oriented practice that challenge normative urban development and propose more inclusive futures.