Since 2023, the Italian Design Society has launched a call for the establishment of bottom-up working groups on permanent themes related to scientific research, institutional and cultural issues, with the aim of broadening and enhancing the active participation of members, building the identity of the association, and strengthening the sense of belonging, stimulating active participation from younger resources.
The bottom-up working groups (art 11.1 of the Regulations) are composed of doctoral students, researchers, and teachers of any level who share specific research interests or structural themes related to scientific research policies and meet freely to share and network knowledge or experiences in particular sectors, support research and scientific development of design, develop projects, and add value to individual and collective work.
In particular, they are organized horizontally through forms of co-responsibility and foresee a composition capable of representing and valuing the diversity of all geographical areas of the association.
The establishment of the Working Groups must be approved by the Board of Directors.
The call is always open, and interested members can submit individual proposals at any time of the year, according to the instructions downloadable from the link on this page.
Active bottom-up groups
Design Ecosystem for Fashion
Fashion is a complex and layered phenomenon that connects traditional material culture with contemporary social, cultural, and productive organization. The fashion system is embodied in a highly competitive ecosystem, rooted in small business dimensions, territorial anchoring, the construction of relational networks between businesses and productive subsystems, and the design capability to integrate codifiable and transferable knowledge with tacit and contextual knowledge.
Yet, fashion also configures itself as an autonomous source of culture: it represents what allows us to grasp the characteristics of the current world, contains the demands of the present, but is also a space for imagining the future and an expression of the social and manufacturing history it constantly preserves and narrates. Fashion is thus a mediation ground between the individual and the environment, reflecting cultural and productive models or designing new ones.
Design 4 Materials
Materials considered within the framework of ecological and digital transition enhance scenarios for project development and sustainable solutions, impacting production dynamics, use, communication, and mediation of project culture. Central to this are aspects related to performance and aesthetic-sensory quality which, through materials, affect the reception, appropriation, and meaning of products.
The scientific design community looks decisively and collectively at the recognition and positioning of its research, assigning the designer an active and multidisciplinary role in transforming practices and theories to guide the evolution of knowledge and skills in the materials area, as already indicated by the historical-cultural tradition of Italian design, beyond any operational practice, while highlighting the strong contribution to the competitiveness of companies and territorial business systems.
Design for Sustainability
Communication Design
ERC: Positioning Design Keywords
Interactive Factory: Enabling Technologies, from IoT to XR
designXeducate
While designers need to redefine their role in contemporary times, there is also a need for updated and structured curricula in the flourishing era of big data and artificial intelligence, starting from a reform of thought and knowledge in response to contemporary complexity. In these terms, the “pedagogical shift” consists of assigning design a key role both in the development of notions and processes and in the development of critical thinking. Based on these premises, the emerging group intends to bring the issues of education in and through design back to the center of scientific debate. Starting from the pedagogical tradition of design – from basic to “new basic” design, from studio-based learning to design thinking – and through fruitful inter-trans-multi-disciplinary contaminations between design, humanities, and learning sciences, it aims to map, share, and experiment with new accessible, democratic, and inclusive learning models, directed at aware researchers and designers to design complexity and through it.
History of Design
The construction and growth of the disciplinary identity of design, according to the mission of SID, requires giving space to research and historical studies. A discipline that cannot support and update the critical elaboration of its own history, or question its position concerning the past, is a discipline without a center of gravity, destined to remain blind to the future. Within the scientific disciplinary sector ICAR/13, there are scholars who have been engaged for several years in advancing historical research in the field of design.
Their work has contributed to broadening the horizons of investigation beyond conventional canons and narratives, but also to reconsidering the history of design in light of the significant breaks produced by transformations in the socio-technical system as well as environmental conditions that directly involve design, its past, and its future. To support and strengthen this commitment, it is necessary to encourage, incentivize, and fund scientific research and the training of researchers in this field. In this direction, the working group “History of Design” intends to develop cognitive, organizational, and directive activities aimed at both supporting the culture of historical research in the scientific disciplinary sector ICAR/13 and promoting the activation of effective opportunities to develop and disseminate historical research related to design.
Pro-Des. Forms and processes of writing, production, and scientific dissemination of design
The goal of the group is to study, research, and experiment, and thus guide the complex phenomenon of writing (“writings”) and scientific publication (scientific production) of design from a cultural, institutional, interdisciplinary, and technological perspective. Due to digital transformation and the affirmation of the open access paradigm, as well as the plurality of research forms and expected impacts, the scenario of scientific production is undergoing a radical questioning, with various attempts to revise and change its methods and processes. The very concept of contemporary “scientific publication” includes, in addition to traditional forms (articles), emerging types of research products not only textual (dynamic and collaborative digital ecosystems of augmented content, updatable and reusable over time) qualitatively accredited.
The group promotes investigation in the following areas:
- innovative forms, formats, and processes of publication;
- responsible models for evaluating quality and impact;
- plurality in the publication of design.
DHeS: Design for Health, Well-being, and Social Inclusion
The group aims to serve as a research and discussion space on the topics of human-centered and inclusive design, to promote the principles of person-centeredness in the design of environments, products, and services, both physical and digital, that are accessible, usable, and meaningful for those in conditions of physical, cognitive, or social fragility, regardless of their abilities, backgrounds, and contexts of use. The goal is to contribute to designing a more inclusive world, where design responds in a factual and innovative way to the challenges of health, well-being, and quality of life.
Design, Territory, Cultural Heritage (D:T:P:)
The goal of the D:T:P: network is to initiate a critical review of the relationship “Design, Territory, Cultural Heritage,” to update reading models, theoretical contexts, and operational practices. On the other hand, it is about re-reading the dependency that manifests itself in new forms between the meanings of local and global in a territorial context that, in renewing key words such as “territorial capital” and “identity,” grows in complexity.
Furthermore, observing how crucial it is to promote basic and applied design research that fosters social innovation, the working group aims to examine the role these have in making citizens, communities, businesses, public governance, and private institutions proactive. For the same reasons, the D:T:P: network intends to investigate the importance assumed by digital technologies for balanced territorial development and therefore to safeguard a material and immaterial culture that, as established by the UNESCO General Conference in 2003, the Faro Convention of 2005, and Goal 11 of the UN 2030 agenda for sustainable cities and communities, guarantees civil rights and democracy.
