Abstract:The paper deals with a didactics and research experience, in which actors from cultural (international no-profit Association enhancing food value), academic (University), commercial (packaging production Firm) and social fields (Foundation recovering and re-distributing food excess) converged on the exploration of postconsumption food waste in public spaces. The aim was to develop products for leftovers pack and transport, the so-called "doggy-bags", increasing meaningfulness and value perception of food resources, raising public awareness on the food waste reduction importance in an environmental, ethical, social, cultural and economical context. The activity involved about 200 students, generated around 50 projects and proceeded with the realization and commercialization of one selected product. A campaign promoting this action and raising awareness about the global urgent phenomenon of post-consumption food waste was launched: the new food bags represent a smart and friendly tool enabling everyone to play their part in assuring food waste minimization and leftovers recover.

The contribution intends to present a research experience developed by three players in academic, commercial and social fields who, working in collaboration, have created the conditions to produce new packaging systems for recovered and regenerated household appliances, in order to reintroduce them into the market. The action is carried out within the Ri-Generation project, activated by Astelav and Sermig (Turin, Italy), aimed at recovering a large number of abandoned appliances in order to prevent the formation of waste in landfills, offer a new life cycle and new value to used products, foster new economies and create job opportunities involving marginalised people in the regeneration operations. The spirit of the Ri-Generation project is maintained in the conception of the packaging, which is produced by transforming and assembling abandoned clothes recovered daily by Sermig. The resulting soft mat can be easily used to wrap the recovered washing machine and protect it during transport to the buyers' home.

In Italy, university courses on Industrial Design were born to train skilled operators to critically assess projects and to pit against different scenarios, combining the technical and production dimension with the sociocultural one. The teaching is aimed at building relationships among function, suggestion, innovation, and adaptation to the context. Nowadays, the situation is different and notably two conditions have brought to a revision of training models and education to the project within the university purview. First, the awareness that Design is now an intersection, a sort of square where human and technical sciences meet and where the Designer is a go-between, whose task is to integrate different skills and knowledge. Second, the recognition that Design has evolved together with the traditional question "how to do it?", since today the Designer is asked also "what to do?" or "where to do it?". Therefore, from a problem solving actor to the exploring researcher, a designer must be able to find out new product types and sectors, new production ways and new consumer behaviours. Based on these challenging scenario for Design, this article aims to discuss the questions "how to do it?", "what to do?" and "where to do it?", which correspond to three training aims having an always increasing complexity in educating the designer to become: an aware designer, able to read the present (explorer 1); a scenario designer, able to foreshadow the future (explorer 2); and a surfing designer, able to go beyond the common sense (explorer 3).

The design of cultural and environmental goods can aim at valorising both material and immaterial cultural heritage at different scales. Specifically, the merchandising product, which is often the victim of production stereotypes, can instead collaborate with a disruptive force in the construction of the non-ephemeral "sense" of a visit. It is, in fact, able to spread complex contents in scientifically correct and comprehensible ways for different targets, condensing the immaterial patrimony into (small) new, low-cost and rich-in-meaning artefacts. This case study, proposed as evidence of such an approach, pertains to a research and teaching activity that was developed in 2017 with 230 university students of design, with the aim of setting up a collection of dedicated merchandising products for a regional talc mine Ecomuseum. The challenge involved narrating the material culture of the location through products that were philologically coherent with the context, but new from the language, functionality, productivity, user involvement and economic accessibility points of view. The resulting projects are, at present, being screened by the Ecomuseum in order to select the most significant for future production. In conclusion, the activity was shown to be potentially scalable and repeatable in other contexts, in which design can valorise an intangible heritage of immense value through products that, inserted into a more extensive strategy of valorisation of the cultural heritage, are within the reach of all.

Cultural heritage is a multidimensional value category that includes not only historic, artistic and architectural excellences but also material culture, the excellent skills of local craftsmanship. The aim of the work is to investigate how design and crafts, working together, can help to enhance the value of the territorial cultural heritage: not only by redefining/updating the expressive products languages, but also creating new channels of distribution. The focus is a design research + didactic operation, dedicated to promote both the circuit of local Royal Residences and the material culture of the territory, through the creation of a museum merchandising collection. Research team has worked with the aim to promote historical excellences with new merchandising craft products developed by design students and local craftmen. The operation involved cultural heritage and crafts experts invited in several seminars and lessons, 150 tutored university students and 30 crafts firms identified by a territorial Consortium. The operation was developed with this dual vocation:-to establish a collaboration, at the same level, between university and craftsmen through students, to find new ways to innovate crafts with a "bottomup" approach;-to indicate directions to develop new products and new opportunities to promote and "taste" the Royal Residences through crafts materials and techniques.