Design Education per l’Economia Circolare. Approccio co-disciplinare nell’acquisizione di hard e soft skills

Design Education can pioneer the production of critical consciousness, promoting a culture of environmental, social and economic sustainability with a holistic approach for future sustainability leaders. There is an urgent need to work at the educational level to define a learning model more suitable to educate different professional profiles able to deal with the complexity of the Circular Economy and to listen to the surroundings to generate new knowledge. Systemic Design, in this sense, can provide design tools to address the complexity of the planet’s current challenges. Through the Erasmus+ project Multitraces, which aims to build new educational pathways for university students from different scientific fields on the Circular Economy in rural areas, we question the role of teaching designers and non-designers a systemic approach to sustainability. With an analysis of the design results achieved by the learners and the outcomes of an individual questionnaire, we reflect on the educational tools and methods to teach non-designers Systemic Design and how design can contribute to addressing the real wicked problems of a circular transition.