C’erano una volta vecchi attrezzi e scarti agricoli: il progetto di un Parco Circolare. Once upon a time there were disused farm tools and agricultural wastes: the Circular Park project.

Enhancing local resources, rethinking the concept of waste, promoting low environmental impact architecture, fostering industrial symbiosis and cooperation among stakeholders, designing without waste are all actions that link to the goals of the 2030 Agenda (2015) and the European Green Deal (2019), urgent objectives at the attention of international policies. In this context, the article aims to present research that experiments with a circular approach to the design by activating new synergies among local actors through the design of a Circular Park in the Monferrato hills. The park tells the story of how waste from a specific territory can become a resource for that place and, through the dimension of physical-visual experience, it encourages future generations of citizens towards new values, by transmitting circularity. In particular, the article describes materials and methods for designing the Circular Park, that led to the development of a micro-architecture, built with disused farm tools and equipment and agricultural waste recovered from local producers. Moreover, the article highlights the importance of challenging new ways of teaching and learning, carried out in the field, and demonstrates how even a ‘small-scale’ intervention can be a promoter of local development, with transferable results to other contexts.