PoliTO Sustainable Campus: An Interdisciplinary Design Education Experience

Education has an essential role in teaching people to understand, manage and change their environment. Higher Education Institutions play a crucial role in the education of future generations, in the development of scientific research which has to be able to meet societal goals and in the dissemination of knowledge inside society, also concerning the capacity of fostering sustainable development. On this basis, the contribution aims to bring to light the experience developed within the framework of a university educational path, the Young Talent Programme project. It involved 236 students from different subject areas (from design to engineering, from architecture to urban planning), who have reasoned around six themes closely related to the theme of sustainability: transport and sustainable mobility, renewable resources and energy production, building and energy efficiency, food, water and waste. What we want to show in the contribution is how the cross-fertilization that can occur in a polytechnical context could be useful for the development of a more complex and full project, and how the discipline of design can become a tool not only for the design of new products, services or communications but also a fundamental tool to mediate the knowledge involved, integrating the different skills and increasing the effects

The Uovo Di Colombo Lab: Designing Against Food Waste

Food waste is an increasingly central issue in our daily lives. It is estimated that, every year, a third of food produced for human consumption is wasted. Considering this, the paper illustrates the experience of the “Uovo di Colombo Lab”, a project offering training activities that address the issue of food waste along the entire food chain, with a particular focus on the phases of recovery, redistribution, processing, and consumption. A workshop organised into mobile kits and providing an assortment of low-tech professional equipment allows young students and members of the public to experience the food transformation processes. This is achieved by applying the circular economy principles in design, creative processes, and co-design methodologies

Personal Data & the City. La visualizzazione come strumento per la progettazione del benessere individuale e collettivo.

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Infovis for the social: a way to explore contents and data in social topics

Information Communication Technology (ICT) has radically changed everyday life, and also changed fields like business, production and distribution, services and social relationships. The first result of this phenomenon is the changing role of the technological network is now central in the relationship creation. In a world where everything is connected, it is essential to understand and make use of the data produced. On one hand we are dealing with a quantitative aspect, on the other hand it is important to find and bring out the qualitative aspect of these data and their possible social impacts. The ability to understand, convey, and give sense to the data is rapidly becoming a potential value.This context includes the field of information visualization (infovis), that we see as a complex multidisciplinary field. In this paper, we present a way for visualizing online discussions related to social and civil values and we show how infovis can be not only a communication tool but also an information tool, turning itself into a functional interface enabling insights and research

Data Visualization Collection. How graphical representation can inspect and communicate sustainability through systemic design.

Big data are totally changing the business rules, the society, as well as the perception of ourself. The need of a big data oriented culture is becoming essential for everything that has an informative asset. Furthermore, technological innovation offers products and features unique that can help to convey values and meanings, for the purpose of communication based on increasingly strong interaction between people. In a world where everything is consumed in a short time, it is important to turn information as visual as possible, making simple what is complex. The visualization becomes a medium for increasing cognitive perception of the beholder, easing reasoning and storing of the information represented, showing patterns and relationships, known or not, maybe not easily visible without the aid of a visual representation of information

From Territory Patrimony to Food Innovation Design

Mainly characterized by culture and tradition, the territories change and communities enhance themselves, always requiring more ways of interaction and communication. It is precisely these characteristics that bring new challenges, which can only be answered by enabling a continuous process of innovation and requalification through the collaborative path of research and constant dialogue between the actors involved. Know-how, cultures, and techniques related to innovation, defined as a mix of shapes and disciplines, are the main topics of the Innovation Design Laboratory of the Politecnico di Torino which fix itself the goal to teach and understand changes and evolutions that can take place in the various fields, developing concepts and projects of impact. This is the aim of the Food Innovation Design project, where through the food topic, it was possible to open new design opportunities able to meet the particular contextual need by forecasting and transmitting value with their action enabling sustainable innovation. This paper presents the path of the project with the explanation of the design process adopted within his methodology and three real outcomes. As a case studies, choose among the most critical area of the Turin's neighborhood, they explain how it was possible to transform the endogenous resources in new innovative value able to increase the quality of life of his inhabitant

Innovation Design for Food

What is the relation between design, food, and Innovation? How these elements influence and interact each other? Finally, what kind of opportunity they offer in our society? The answers to these questions are the challenge of the Innovation Design for Food project developed during the last three years in the Innovation Laboratory. The purpose of the research and the educational path, linked to it, was to understand changes and evolutions, that can take place in the context of the Turin city to develop innovative projects, spreading and enabling social, sustainable and economic value through the food topic. As a source of well- being, a symbolic element of identity and a vehicle for interaction between different cultures, the food topic was the carrier innovation source that has allowed the development of about 27 innovative projects