Giuseppe Lotti

The Made in Italy Circular and Sustainable (MICS) project presents a systemic vision of sustainability, rooted in Italian tradition yet projected toward the future. Moving beyond standardized models, Italy interprets sustainability through the fusion of aesthetics, ethics, and local craftsmanship. The exhibition “Made in Italy towards Sustainability. From Tradition to Futures.” establishes a dialogue between 16 iconic historical products and 16 contemporary prototypes, highlighting how technological innovation - ranging from artificial intelligence to smart materials, additive manufacturing, and augmented reality - intertwines with cultural values, social responsibility, and circular production. The eight thematic areas explore digital design, eco-design, green materials, inclusive factories, and new business models. The immersive and sustainable exhibition design, using video mapping and visual atlases, reinterprets Italy’s figurative heritage as a critical and generative language. Design thus emerges as both a cultural practice and a strategic approach, capable of transforming memory into the future, craftsmanship into innovation, and beauty into responsibility. In this context, sustainability is not a trend but a structural imperative of Italian design thinking, offering concrete alternatives to dominant global models. Made in Italy is therefore envisioned as an open laboratory where tradition and technology coexist in a sustainable, inclusive vision aimed at enhancing quality of life.

This paper critically examines the limitations of mainstream circular eco-design approaches and proposes an alternative framework grounded in post-circular thinking. Drawing on futures studies, speculative design, and Emergence theory, it situates eco-design within the evolving context of Industry 5.0. Using Italy's Spoke 2 project as a focal point, the study analyses the technocratic tendencies of circular eco-design strategies and introduces speculative design as both critique and method. A workshop methodology is presented, informed by three spheres of intervention —biosphere, technosphere, and infosphere —and mapped across industrial temporalities. The paper also highlights "Abitiamo i futuri," a public event that takes place in Florence as part of Spoke 2’s Roadshow, which brings these critical approaches into open dialogue with a broader audience through roundtables and participatory workshops. The paper concludes by reflecting on the design’s role in enabling inclusive, situated, and anticipatory futures.

Design and Innovation for Made in Italy

The complexity of today’s environmental and social challenges calls for an interdisciplinary approach capable of understanding the connections between different issues and envisioning alternative scenarios. Design, which has traditionally played a catalytic role in bringing together diverse contributions, is a transformative discipline: it practices the future and can make a significant contribution to environmental, socio-cultural, economic, and political sustainability. The role, methods, and tools of the discipline are presented through research and projects addressing some of the key issues of our time: the more-than-human perspective, decolonial approaches, the Mediterranean as a space of cultural exchange, interculturality, the enhancement of small and often marginal territories, and the exploration of a conscious approach to technology.

In an increasingly technology‐driven world, this study examined how communication design students can critically and creatively master advanced digital tools to craft immersive storytelling experiences, drawing upon an ‘analogue’ mindset. While immersive experiences are often associated with XR technologies, true immersion transcends the medium: it involves fostering a profound sense of engagement, presence and embodiment that shifts the user's perspective. In this context, theatre, with its empathetic and deconstructive nature, provides valuable insights by fostering emotionally rich, analogue experiences that deepen students' understanding of immersive storytelling. This study presented an educational experiment conducted within a communication design seminar, where students participated in a blended theatrical storytelling exercise. By fully immersing themselves in this experience, they unlocked their imagination and developed a deeper understanding of how emotional and sensory involvement can elevate storytelling design, regardless of the use of advanced technologies. Acting as audience members allowed future communication designers to grasp the engaging potential of these encounters, enriching their ability to create compelling, emotionally resonant narratives. The methodology, while not without challenges, was highly appreciated, demonstrating the powerful synergy between advanced digital design and performative arts. This approach introduced a new paradigm in experience design, offering future creators innovative pathways to redefine storytelling boundaries and craft meaningful, human‐centred interactions.

Immersive technologies are increasingly acknowledged as powerful tools in sustainability education, capable of fostering deeper engagement and emotional resonance. This study investigates the potential of 360° VR storytelling to enhance learning through embodied knowledge, attitudinal change, and emotional awareness. Conducted within the EMOTIONAL project, the research explores a first-person narrative told from the perspective of a ceramic object rooted in Italian cultural heritage, designed to facilitate meaningful, affective learning. The present study addresses the following research questions: RQ1 Can 360° VR story-living narrations effectively promote embodied learning and semantic and attitudinal shifts in the context of sustainability education? RQ2 What added insights can be gained from integrating subjective assessments with physiological measures? To this end, a hybrid assessment framework was developed and validated, combining subjective self-report tools (including attitudinal scales, semantic differential analysis, and engagement metrics) with objective physiological measures, specifically Electrodermal Activity (EDA). Sixty participants, including students and entrepreneurs, experienced the immersive narrative, and a subset underwent physiological tracking to evaluate the effectiveness of the experience. The findings show that immersive storytelling can enhance emotional and cognitive engagement, producing shifts in semantic interpretation, self-perceived knowledge, and attitudes toward material culture. A convergence of high emotional engagement, embodied learning, and technology acceptance was observed, although individual differences emerged based on prior experience and disciplinary background. EDA data offered complementary insights, identifying specific moments of heightened arousal during the narrative. The study demonstrates that emotionally driven immersive narratives (supported by integrated assessment methods) can make abstract sustainability values more tangible and personally resonant, thereby fostering more reflective and relational approaches to sustainable consumption and production.

Immersive technologies are increasingly acknowledged as powerful tools in sustainability education, capable of fostering deeper engagement and emotional resonance. This study investigates the potential of 360° VR storytelling to enhance learning through embodied knowledge, attitudinal change, and emotional awareness. Conducted within the EMOTIONAL project, the research explores a first-person narrative told from the perspective of a ceramic object rooted in Italian cultural heritage, designed to facilitate meaningful, affective learning. A hybrid assessment framework was developed and validated, combining subjective self-report tools (including attitudinal scales, semantic differential analysis, and engagement metrics) with objective physiological measures, specifically Electrodermal Activity (EDA). Sixty participants, including students and entrepreneurs, experienced the immersive narrative, and a subset underwent biometric tracking to evaluate the effectiveness of the experience. Findings show that immersive storytelling can effectively enhance emotional and cognitive engagement, producing shifts in semantic interpretation, self-perceived knowledge, and attitudes toward material culture. A convergence of high emotional engagement, embodied learning, and technology acceptance was observed, although individual differences emerged based on prior experience and disciplinary background. EDA data offered complementary insights, identifying specific moments of heightened arousal during the narrative. The study demonstrates that emotionally driven immersive narratives (supported by integrated assessment methods) can make abstract sustainability values more tangible and personally resonant, thereby fostering more reflective and relational approaches to sustainable consumption and production.

The urgencies of the contemporary scenario impose on the world of design the need for complex responses; the dialogue with other disciplines becomes a fundamental planning source. In this sense, the necessity is to have an increasing need of designers capable of understanding and interacting with the hard sciences in a more conscious and complete way, in order to develop future application scenarios in every aspect of design, from materials to everyday products, up to new systemic scenarios. The contribution presents a 3CFU training experience carried out by the Design for Sustainability Laboratory (University of Florence) which had the aim of introducing students to Material Design and Biodesign. The applied methodology started from the concepts of Material Experience and Material Driven Design, including interdisciplinary skills in the design process from the early design stages. In particular, the students were led to experiment with "biotinkering" solutions with the mycelium - Pleurotus ostreatus - within a biosafety Level (BSL) 1 Lab, creating materials prototypes. In the training activities, students were provided with theoretical notions and resources relating to biology and the scientific method with the aim of combining Design and Life Sciences. From a methodological point of view, this knowledge served to provide future biodesigners with greater awareness of biotechnological processes and laboratory work. The originality and success of the Workshop consist in opening up new design horizons to future biodesigners thanks to a deep knowledge of natural processes and the possibility of consciously designing starting from the micro scale.