Systemic Incubator for Local Ecoentrepreneurship to Favour a Sustainable Local Development: Guidelines Definition

Systemic Design (SD) has demonstrated over the years the ability to create eco-opportunities for innovation in the manufacturing sector. Despite SD projects high value, the implementation of these complex projects is difficult, although this can boost local economies preventing waste creation to reach a sustainable local development. This research investigates the relationship between design, entrepreneurship and environmental sustainability, questioning how best support emerging businesses created by SD, and reflecting on the incubation services that are needed to develop eco-opportunities. To sustain this thesis is analysed a project for the textile industry developed by master students in SD under the framework of RETRACE European project for Piedmont Region (Italy), the area on which the SD research group is reflecting with policymakers. The result is the definition of guidelines to ease SD projects implementation and design a new Systemic Incubator for local eco-entrepreneurship, highlighting the strategic role of systemic design

Systemic Design, from the content to the structure of education: new educational model.

In the 19th century, new discoveries permitted to pass from the Cartesian mechanism to a holistic view of life.  In the educational field movements as Constructivist Learning and Holistic Education have represented an important contribution to this change of paradigm. In this scenario Systemic Design was born: it aims to imitate Nature in anthropic activities. The educational model used to teach this discipline should follow the holistic approach in order to raise awareness in new generations of conscious and responsible citizens for a sustainable future. Indeed, it is not possible to use a linear model like the current one. The case study used to sustain this thesis is the academic lab 'Open Systems' of the MSc Systemic Design of Politecnico di Torino, composed of four courses that work together (Design, Economy, Engineering, Humanities). The lab is questioning its model aligning it with the specific characteristics of an open living system

Is design playing a role in the realisation of circular economy projects in Europe? A case study analysis.

Thanks to the strong push coming from the European Union to fight waste production, the Circular Economy (CE) has gained an important role in Europe. Following this trend, many institutions nowadays state to work on the CE implementation or supporting the transition to a CE. However, are they including design approaches and practices? The design phase is starting to be considered the crucial point to obtain a CE as it required a profound radical change from the beginning of the process and at system levels. After framing the CE concept, we performed desk research to identify which are the players in the CE projects implementation. Afterwards, a multiple case study analysis were performed to the most proper one to understand the presence and the role of design in the implementation process. The results placed the actors in a very fragmented framework and seem to lack almost completely the design presence

um corpus de arte pública para a extração de léxico: representatividade e comparabilidade em corpora de especialidade

UID/LIN/03213/2019 PD/BD/128131/2016This paper introduces the CORPORART, a bilingual corpusof Public Art. CORPORART intends to gather, in a single collection of bilingual data, representative samples of specialized languagein European Portuguese and Italian. The compilationof this corpusis part of anongoingdoctoral project, which aims to integrate specialized lexical units into a pre-existing common language resource, WordNet.PT(Marrafa et al., 2005), in the perspective of contributing to streamline communication between heterogeneous interlocutors (Amaro & Mendes, 2012). Assuming that the structure of the corpusheavily depends on the goals of the investigation, this paper presents the linguistic and extralinguistic parameters adopted for the construction and organization of the corpus,as well as the criteriafortextprocessing. In particular, we will deepenthe notion of representativity and comparability considering the specificityof thiscase study, outliningawork practice proposaloriented to guarantee these two flexible dimensions withinthe specialized languages context.publishersversionpublishe

Terminologia da arte urbana : para uma wordnet bilingue italiano-português

A presente dissertação representa a finalização do meu percurso académico na área da Tradução. Tendo escolhido o âmbito da tradução especializada como área de trabalho, a dissertação apresenta uma pesquisa terminológica relativa a conceitos representativos no domínio da Arte Urbana e a construção de redes léxico-conceptuais com o objetivo de desenvolver um recurso lexical de especialidade, intuitivo e acessível, e também considerado como recurso para ferramentas de processamento das línguas naturais, nomeadamente tradução automática. O trabalho, portanto, divide-se essencialmente em dois blocos. Uma primeira parte é dedicada às questões relativas à própria tradução especializada e à terminologia do domínio artístico escolhido. Juntamente com este enquadramento teórico, é apresentado o trabalho prático de construção de corpora de referência para a pesquisa e a extração terminológica desenvolvidas com o objetivo da criação das redes léxico-conceptuais. A segunda parte é dedicada à proposta de wordnets de léxico especializado. Os recursos construídos seguem a estrutura da Wordnet.PT, projeto que surgiu no âmbito do modelo EuroWordnet. Estes consistem em bases de dados terminológicas construídas tendo como unidade fundamental o conceito, cuja caracterização resulta das relações semânticas que se estabelecem na rede. Mais uma vez, esta parte do trabalho é constituída por uma secção teórica, na qual é explicado o funcionamento do modelo e é descrita a evolução que este teve a partir da primeira experiência da Wordnet de Princeton até hoje, seguida por uma parte prática, na qual é desenvolvida e analisada a própria rede. É ainda importante sublinhar o facto de que o presente trabalho tem como objeto duas línguas, Português e Italiano. A determinação das línguas de trabalho conjuga a minha língua materna e a língua utilizada nesta parte do meu percurso de formação.This work represents the end of my academic career in Translation. Having chosen technical translation as field of study, my work concerns terminological research related to the main concepts of the Street Art, and the creation of lexical-conceptual networks for such domain. The goal was to develop an intuitive and accessible lexical resource, which can also be used as a resource for natural language processing tools, namely machine translation. This work consists, basically, on two parts. The first one is dedicated to the problems related to technical translation and to the terminology of the artistic field that has been chosen. Along with the theoretical framework, it describes the practical process of creation of the corpora used for research and term extraction, designed for the criation of the lexical-conceptual networks. The second part of this work is devoted to the proposal of the specialized lexicon wordnets. The resources created follow the WordNet.PT structure, which in turn resulted from and was part of the European EuroWordNet project. These resources consist of terminological databases, based on the unit of concept. Concepts are, in this model, characterized by the semantic relations established between the nodes that are part of the network. Once more, the work presents a theoretical section, in which the model is described along with its evolution from the first experiment of the Wordnet of Princeton until now. This section is followed by a practical section where the developed networks are analysed.It‟s also important to underline that the work concerns two languages, Portuguese and Italian. The choice of the work languages combines my mother language and the one I used during this phase of my studies

A Systemic Design Method to Approach Future Complex Scenarios and Research Towards Sustainability: A Holistic Diagnosis Tool

This article aims to frame the role of Systemic Design (SD) as an alternative design model for the future of design for sustainability, by defining and assessing a structured process to execute Holistic Diagnosis (HD), an innovative context framework. Taking as its background a deep understanding of the design for sustainability and systems thinking concepts that frame SD as a field where HD is rooted, multiple case-study analyses were performed. HD demonstrates its ability to overcome the design boundaries in different fields such as industrial production, local communities, and policy-making, thereby providing a more in-depth understanding of complex environments with an iterative process: assess, research, collect, visualize, and interpret. This framework is a relevant tool for designers to address problem framing in complex scenarios to obtain future sustainable solutions with an innovative and transdisciplinary approach, thereby promoting a horizontal dialogue among all involved component

What really matters? Systemic Design, motivations and values of the Circular Economy companies in Italy.

Since 2014, the Circular Economy (CE) concept is gaining an important role in the European context thanks to the specific direction given by the EU policy. This research wants to frame Italian companies who are working on CE context to understand mainly which is their approach and awareness to CE and if the design is playing a role in this transition. At the beginning of 2019, an online questionnaire was sent to the actors present in the app database ‘Mercato Circolare’ who, since March 2017, is mapping the Italian situation collecting the actors related to the CE selecting companies, events and experiences of circular citizenship. Despite the response rate was 14%, the results are interesting: 100% are SMEs; 21% are not aware to work on CE; >52% identified difficulties with value appreciation; design competencies are present in the 66% of realities and in 29% the designers by formation are founders

Para uma metodologia sólida e sustentada

UIDB/03213/2020 UIDP/03213/2020A exploração de corpora para a extração de léxico de especialidade é um método consensual e comum na construção de recursos lexicais. No entanto, as metodologias empregadas não são explicitamente discutidas, dificultando a comparação e a determinação de abordagens robustas. Para preencher essa lacuna, neste artigo apresentamos e discutimos uma metodologia detalhada para extração de léxico de especialidade a partir de corpora, conjugando abordagens linguísticas e estatísticas. O método proposto prevê tanto o uso de corpora de especialidade como de corpora monitores e inclui: i) análise de dados de frequência; ii) extração de concordâncias e colocações; iii) extração de informação de ordem textual, permitindo a extração de unidades lexicais atómicas e multipalavra e de relações semânticas relevantes. Desse modo, o objetivo da metodologia é a determinação de listas de potenciais unidades lexicais de especialidade e de informações relevantes para a sua descrição que permitam uma validação final rápida e eficiente, maximizando o valor informacional da interação com os especialistas.publishersversionpublishe

Systemic design for territorial development: Ecosystem to support autopoietic local economies

This research wants to demonstrate the need and the importance of the cre­ation of an ecosystem to support the implementation of projects born from Systemic Design (SD) approach. The leading cause behind it is mainly rela­ted to difficult and complex implementation and the success of this type of projects in practical terms. However, they have specific characteristics that can tackle critical current challenges identified by many scholars as climate change, waste production, limitation of natural resources and pollution. For this reason, it is vital to sustain and foster their implementation. To demonstrate this thesis, we firstly analysed previous SD projects applied to the manufacturing sectors developed in Politecnico di Torino to under­stand the principal barriers in their implementation. These projects are related to specific economic and productive realities (e.g. Barbero, 2016) or many realities in specific territories – intended as geographical areas – (e.g. Battistoni, 2016). This process was facilitated thanks to the direct involve­ment of authors in these projects. The result is that SD demonstrates to be able to connect the territory, design and environmental issue. The design discipline with its methodology and approaches has just confirmed to be a solution for the valorisation of the material culture and natural resources of a specific territory (De Giorgi, 2008; Catania, 2011). SD enlarges the borders of the traditional design discipline producing a step forward the eco-design. Indeed, SD approach applied to the single activities permits to change their core business, improving and increasing their incomes, considering waste as resources as in the Blue Economy (Pauli, 2010). Moreover, this approach permits the creation of new products that in some cases let the born of new economic realities, generating the autopoiesis typical of the natural systems as defined by Maturana and Varela (Capra, 1996) (see fig.1). All these oppor­tunities can boost sustainable territorial development, creating a local cir­cular economy. Moreover, this analysis highlighted important characteristics of SD projects that are more than the five principal guidelines previously defined as Output-Input, Relationships, Act locally, Autopoiesis, Man at the centre of the project (Bistagnino, 2011). At the same time, they can represent the bar­riers to their success and implementation. The main reason is that they re­quired, at the basis, a cultural paradigm shift (Barbero,2016), from the linear to the systemic thinking, from competition to collaboration, identified just by Capra as a “the turning point” (Capra,1982). In this framework, complexi­ty results one of the SD projects fundamental characteristic as they focus on the relationships between components instead of the single entities and on the resources which go in and out of a production process. Talking about input/output and not resour­ces/waste, the focus is more on qualitative aspects than on quantitative ones. Another consideration that is possible to make from this analysis is that SD projects are community-oriented, territorial-oriented and environ­ment-oriented more than profit-oriented. Producing environmental sustai­nability, with implications on the economic and social one, they require the competences of different disciplines, multiple actors and stakeholders, both in the design phase than in their implementation, being multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary projects. Last but not least, they require financial sup­port, human resources and project management as all the projects. The cur­rent emphasis on the Circular Economy from the European Union is luckily helping to bridge this gap since 2015 (EU, 2015). Once settled these characteristics, in a post-Anthropocene era becomes ne­cessary the design of an ecosystem (ECO-SD) (see fig.2) able to stimulate and foster the born and the implementation of innovative systemic projects. In­deed, the concept of the complex adaptive system that comes from biology is starting to be used by the business environment (Reeves, 2016). Looking at the territory and its productive sectors with a systemic appro­ach, shifting the attention from the single actors to the relationships that are possible to create among them, is possible to obtain different results. As the theory of system suggests “the whole is GREATER than the sum of its parts” (Aristotle), or better “the whole is OTHER than the sum of its parts” from Gestalt theory (Koffka). This shift can let emerge several new opportu­nities and potentialities linked to a development which is far away from the current economic evidence, centred exclusively to the increase of the GDP. Acting in this way is possible to answer to the real needs of a specific area, with the final goal to act on the cultural paradigm, obtaining a real sustai­nable development. The core of this ecosystem cannot be identified in the current incubators of start-ups which are concentrated mainly on the economic sustainability of the projects and the training of the future entrepreneurs within linear eco­nomy benchmarks. Instead, it is a systemic incubator with the goal to foster the born and the reproduction of productive processes and act as an open system. In here, also the economists should think in another way as Rawor­th suggested (Raworth, 2017). In the ECO-SD, the attention is on the flow of information, matter and energy which create relationship both inside every single process and within them, and within the context of reference where it is placed. The heart of ECO-SD is the research centre which acts as a guide: starting from the execution of the Holistic Diagnosis (Battistoni 2017, 2018), it can identify the current significant problems and the sectors where projects are needed. Opening the way to the innovation of process, products and ser­vices, that are therefore designed and implemented by multidisciplinary groups. In this case, the designers collaborate with other scholars and exper­ts coming from the natural, social and economic science, acting as “media­tor” (Celaschi, 2008), fostering the dialogue and the contamination. Working together for the implementation of the new projects, they should maintain the link with the local actors, not exclusively coming from the productive sector but also from the decision-making, to assure a local development in line with the policy design