RSD7 featured relaxed “learning-and-doing time”. At the end of each day, three decompressing “Books and Beers” events were hosted in the close venue of Eataly. Five recently published books were introduced to the audience and discussed in a more informal environment.
Circular economy for food. Materia, energia e conoscenza, in circolo
The ways we have produced and consumed food over the past fifty years have had devastating impacts on ecosystems and human societies. The agro-industrial sector has contributed to exceeding 4 of the 9 thresholds that determine global limits – climate change, loss of biodiversity, changes in the nitrogen and phosphorus cycle, changes in land use. The consumption of unhealthy food is causing serious health problems, and while almost a billion people have no food, we throw away enough food to feed them without problems. It is clear that the current system, based on a rigidly linear logic, does not work, and that the transition to a circular economy would bring enormous benefits to the environment and consumers. A logic that can be partly traced back to the knowledge and traditions of rural civilization, where everything was reused, and that could promote awareness of the dynamics and cultural relationships underlying the act of eating, encouraging the food system to find a new balance. Circular Economy for Food takes stock of the current transformation, and in addition to the contributions of some of the most prestigious Italian experts, presents forty case studies dedicated to companies in the food sector that have focused on circularity to pave the way for innovations that can reduce waste and improve the eco-efficiency and efficiency of products, services and processes in the food system.
Designing Sustainable Energy for All: Sustainable Product-service System Design Applied to Distributed Renewable Energy
Access to energy is one of the greatest challenges for many people living in low-income and developing contexts, as around 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity.
Distributed Renewable Energy systems (DRE) are considered a promising approach to address this challenge and provide energy access to all. However, even if promising, the implementation of DRE systems is not always straightforward.
The book analyses, discusses and classifies the promising Sustainable Product-Service System (S.PSS) business models to deliver Distributed Renewable Energy systems in an effective, efficient and sustainable way. Its message is supported with cases studies and examples, discussing the economic, environmental and socioethical benefits as well as its limitations and barriers to its implementation. An innovative design approach is proposed and a set of design tools are supplied, enabling readers to create and develop Sustainable Product-Service System (S.PSS) solutions to deliver Distributed Renewable Energy systems.
Practical applications of the book is design approach and tools by companies and practitioners are discussed and the book will be of interest to readers in design, industry, govermanetal institution, NGOs as well as researchers.
Olivetti Makes: Design. Industry. Society.
Olivetti Makes describes the results of an industrial expansion project in Latin America launched by Olivetti starting in the 1920s, upon the establishment of one of the first foreign Olivetti sales branches in Argentina.
The book looks back at an insufficiently investigated chapter in the history of Olivetti, founded more than 110 years ago in Ivrea (Italy), an industrial city that was recently inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Olivetti Makes illustrates the concrete dimension of the cultural and industrial policy adopted by Olivetti in Mexico starting in 1949, when the first embryo of a company selling Olivetti products was born.
At first a simple outpost for selling of incredible writing and calculation machines imported from Italy, it was renovated and expanded little by little to become – in the 1960s – a manufacturing workshop and later a full-fledged facility for the production and sale of Made in Mexico devices. The flagship product for Olivetti in Mexico would become the portable typewriter, which would manage to penetrate the school market in particular, implying a positive outcome not only in terms of sale, but also in terms of familiarity with a high-tech product at the time.
The title references the action of “doing” and “producing”, but also the ability to pragmatically “communicate” the aesthetic and technological qualities of products through graphic design and other visual artifacts, as exhibited at the Olivetti retail outlets – above all the showroom on Paseo de la Reforma.
In Mexico the company also designed the workplace and workshop itself by attempting to replicate positive models of factory-society relationship, strong of the experience gained in Italy. Some of the projects and goals would only remain on paper (e.g. the factory model designed by architect Ricardo Legorreta), also due to a political and economic context where it was not easy to implement the full-on “olivettian” business model and an epochal technology shift – the passage from mechanical to electronic machinery – that revolutionized the global typewriter and calculating machine industry, with tangible consequences both in the development of new products and in the reorganization of industrial processes.
Systemic Design Method Guide for Policymaking: A Circular Europe on the Way
This volume aims at clarifying the role of circular economy according to a sustainable development and how policymakers can target it effectively in their activities. The main question is: which methodology can policy managers use in order to define a clear path towards a circular economy in their regions? Indeed, this path means shifting from a linear and mechanistic approach to a holistic and integrated one, where the number of variables and relations generates a complex environment. So, the policies should manage and solve complex problems with new structured innovation approaches compared to the past. Specifically, the Systemic Design method provides specific tools in order to manage complex situations, to design new relations among the entities of a territory, to visualize the hidden potentialities and to boost proactive collaboration among local actors. This book is a guide to Systemic Design as a key methodology to establish sustainable regional action plans towards a Circular Economy. As the result of an intense dialogue between people who present different perspectives and seek for a common language in the current complexity of policy-making and designing, this is the first of a three-book series published across a four-year period (2016–2020) as part of the RETRACE Project funded by the Interreg Europe Programme.
Systemic Design: Theory, Methods, and Practice
This 2018 Springer book was published from leading work presented at RSD5, Toronto in 2016, and is a title in the Translational Systems Science series edited by Prof. Kyoichi “JIm” Kijima. Ten chapters from RSD authors discuss the “better means of change” through integrated design practices for systems and services. Peter Jones calls on advanced design to lead programs of strategic scale and higher complexity (e.g., social policy, healthcare, education, urbanization) while adapting systems thinking methods, creatively pushing the boundaries beyond the modes of systems thinking. Systemic design is distinguished by its scale, social complexity, and integration – it is concerned with higher-order systems that that entail multiple subsystems. By integrating systems thinking and its methods, systemic design brings human-centred design to complex, multi-stakeholder service systems. As designers engage with ever more complex problem areas, it is necessary to draw on a basis other than individual creativity and contemporary “design thinking” methods. Systems theories can co-evolve with a new school of design theory to resolve informed action on today’s highly resilient complex problems and can deal effectively with demanding, contested and high-stakes challenges.