Title:	E-LEARNING PLATFORM ON SUSTAINABILITY AND NEW C2C CRITERION BY THE ITALIAN OBSERVATORY OF DESIGN. THE FIRST STEP CONSISTS OF CHANGING THE WAY OF LOOKING AT THE WORLD.
Author(s):	Dalia Gallico
ISBN:	978-989-8704-00-9
Editors:	Theodora Issa, Nurfadhlina Mohd Sharef, Tomayess Issa and Pedro Isaías
Year:	2013
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	E-learning; Life-long learning; Cradle to Cradle; Collaborative Innovation, School as a "design center"; Knowledge toward specialization
Type:	Full Paper
First Page:	37
Last Page:	44
Language:	English
Cover:
Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	Life-long learning and the Collaborative Innovation Observatory need to more effectively integrate crucial elements into designing regional sustainable production and consumption. Creating a new e-learning platform is an important way of building a new design community identity through lifelong learning, a significant meeting space for not only professionals, but also for people working outside established enterprises to assess and make improvements in sustainable supply chain management. The e-learning platform launched by Università San Raffaele Roma is now raising awareness and opening new markets for the green economy by spreading a positive vision, bringing effective tools to people’s attention, putting players in touch, creating systems, highlighting good practices, and improving good models. A design observatory organizes research and events that run parallel to the big Milan shows all year round. The objective is to create a permanent place for meetings and exchanging knowledge, for spreading throughout the world of design and business the idea that sustainable development is an opportunity not to be missed. In particular research about the 100 success cases regarding the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) that intersects sectors from design, fashion, to food. Cradle to Cradle provides rigorous product development and service consistent with the needs, models of fruition and the symbolic/emotional expectations of users, but also is attentive to the process and production costs and sensitive to environmental themes (minimisation of pollution, ease of waste disposal and the possibility of recycling). Cradle to Cradle becomes a method for guiding and communicating to businesses the quality of its products, processes and services, new ways of “doing business”, being recognisable, combining quality, innovation and recognition, new ways of better investment, protecting inventions, and increasing the value of “intangible” factors. In selecting those products/services, new and precise criteria is introduced: formal aesthetic, typological, and functional innovation; impact on the environment (production, consumption, recyclability, ease of assembly); communicative value of the object; usability; wider usage; appropriate use of technology, components, and materials; suitability for use; compatibility; adaptability; and reliability. A network of knowledge about sustainability is created towards developing a system for the communication and the diffusion of an entire system-product that in turn gives life to other tools, such as the updating of training proposals, counselling services for young business people and designers, reception and information, guidance and consultancy, and new relationships between producers and clients (innovative forms of co-production of value). This is to show that Italian design is both aware and an integral part of the life cycle of products and services, together in harmony with private wellbeing and the common good, can reduce environmental impact and improve quality of life. Currently, the E-learning platform makes available excellent skills in monitoring and mapping in order to educate critics and give them the ability to understand what to buy. To actually succeed in spreading a culture that cares about sustainable development it is not enough to simply exert pressure on designers and producers, but requires growing demands from below, a demand that would be capable of directing the system of consumption. The University like a design centre becomes the junction where interaction between ethical subjects, companies, designers, associations, editorial structures, and local institutions that share common goals (Circle Thinking) and values in order to seize all the opportunities, interests, and availability of actors during a phase of radical change in consumption and the market. This networked system of industrial quality products, created through the analysis of several planning studies, becomes in itself, a compendium of knowledge and good practices. What led to the acceptance of this role was the recognition and the wider vision of this principle that anticipated the “ethical” role of the project. This is the same role that the University currently supports together with an ethical and aesthetic identity that Italian design must adopt at an international level, working towards sustainability together with business, finance and institutions (Design for Business and Business for Design). The necessity to redesign a new system of knowledge and alliances, through a multicultural system that feeds on differences is the most challenging issue that universities and associations must address now along with other international groups.
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