Challenging circularity in product design. The Circular Sofa Platform outreach

The Circular Sofa Platform (CSP) project aims to foster an effective and systemic circular transition in the Italian upholstered furniture sector. Through a modular and context-sensitive design platform, it brings together strategies across materials, processes, and supply chains. Its integrated, multi-level approach demonstrates the flexibility of design when applied to specific regulatory and production systems, showing how circular transitions require coordinated action rather than isolated technical solutions. Central to CSP is a research-driven methodology that combines field analysis, stakeholder engagement, and technical experimentation. Instead of treating circularity as a linear optimisation process, the methodology frames the upholstered furniture sector as an interconnected system in which materials, production networks, design conventions, and territorial dynamics influence one another. This systemic reading enables the identification of opportunities for intervention at multiple scales, product architecture, supply-chain relations, and business models, allowing circular strategies such as disassembly, reuse, material recovery, and localised manufacturing to be evaluated and adapted according to feasibility and context. By discussing the framework and methodological structure underpinning CSP, this paper does not present final outcomes but instead contributes a replicable approach for guiding circular innovation in similarly complex industrial ecosystems.