PoliTO Sustainable Campus: An Interdisciplinary Design Education Experience

Education has an essential role in teaching people to understand, manage and change their environment. Higher Education Institutions play a crucial role in the education of future generations, in the development of scientific research which has to be able to meet societal goals and in the dissemination of knowledge inside society, also concerning the capacity of fostering sustainable development. On this basis, the contribution aims to bring to light the experience developed within the framework of a university educational path, the Young Talent Programme project. It involved 236 students from different subject areas (from design to engineering, from architecture to urban planning), who have reasoned around six themes closely related to the theme of sustainability: transport and sustainable mobility, renewable resources and energy production, building and energy efficiency, food, water and waste. What we want to show in the contribution is how the cross-fertilization that can occur in a polytechnical context could be useful for the development of a more complex and full project, and how the discipline of design can become a tool not only for the design of new products, services or communications but also a fundamental tool to mediate the knowledge involved, integrating the different skills and increasing the effects.