The design for circularity workshop. Merging construction industry challenges with educational goals

A pressing issue affecting the overall performance of education programmes in architecture including bachelor and master courses concerns the need for a more direct relationship with the building industry and the possibility to enhance vocational training through on the field experiences to enrich competences towards the labour market. Moreover, following the recent trends in architectural practice, addressing the growing complexity of the construction process, the importance is acknowledged of fostering horizontal and vertical exchanges among different programmes and specialisations as an experience of dialogue and debate, to enhance multidisciplinary activities not only in the education offer but also in the students’ collaborative team working design experiences. Accordingly, following an invitation by Made expo, the biggest Italian biennial construction industry fair, taking place in Milan, to organize educational activities aimed at boosting the involvement of the young, students and researchers, in the event, a design workshop was planned for the School of Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano. The Workshop was focused on circular economy as an urgent contemporary goal and was aimed at promoting innovation through the development of circular processes and natural products, grouped in specific topics: design for reuse, recycle, upcycle of production waste; design for disassembly; design with biobased materials. Therefore, two parallel calls were launched in December 2023: a call for challenges open to companies and manufacturers to foster circularity in their production process and delivery chain and a call for participation open to all the students and professors of the Bachelor and Master degree courses of the School AUIC. More than 80 candidates answered the call and after a selection they were organised in seven teams mixing students enrolled in two or more degree programmes tutored by two professors (tenured/adjunct) teaching in two different degree programmes. The work was developed over the 2023 spring semester encompassing tutorials, teamwork, presentations and meetings with the companies and visits to the production sites. Finally, the design proposals were publicly presented, discussed and peer reviewed in a dedicated space within the MadeExpo 2023 Milan Fair. The paper presents and discusses this workshop experience, as a case study for both vocational training and transdisciplinary activity within architecture courses, highlighting potentials and limits and a scaling up perspective.