Design International - Open Access

Artificial intelligence is more-or-less covertly entering our lives and houses, embedded into products and services that are acquiring novel roles and agency on users. The design discipline and the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field are just beginning to explore the wicked relationship between Design and AI, looking for a definition of its borders, still blurred and ever changing. The book approaches this issue from a human-centered standpoint, proposing designerly reflections on AI-infused products. It addresses one main guiding question: what are the design implications of embedding intelligence into everyday objects?

The book presents different perspectives of analysis and new models of experience, reconfirming the importance assigned to the wellbeing and human-centered approach in the contemporary spatial design disciplinary debate. The aim is to explore the transformation process which we are living, both in private and in public spaces, underlining the central role of design to define new qualities of connections to live together in relation with the space around us.

The book explores the relationship between time and the design of spaces. The temporal dimension of spaces is a horizon that has yet to be strongly explored. In the future it is increasingly likely that it will be the forms of time, rather than those of space, that will undergo the most interesting transformations. The essays explore time: as measurements, adaptations/compositions, memories, machines and technologies, identities, narratives, sensitivities in an increasingly globalized and wrapped world.

The Fashion System is one of the most polluting and most impactful industries on the environment. In the last decade the fashion industry has changed its approach, aware of the fact that the attention to the environment can no longer be considered a trend. This path shows the need to intervene in design terms and that the growth in responsibility and role of design, requiring reference scenarios, knowledge and new tools. The book defines the features and scenarios of sustainable development, as well as the evolution of sustainability in research and practice of fashion design, addressing the strategies for the design and development of environmentally sustainable products.

The book explores the radical transformation of living and working spaces, in which the hybridization of interior and exterior requires a new vision able to interpreter renewed people’s behaviours and needs, a challenging issue for the design discipline that has a multidisciplinary nature as well as a multiscale approach for both research and practice. Our ambition is to re-launch an aesthetic, sustainable, design-based approach to improve dwelling conditions, trying to implement care into different well-being dimensions – mental, physical, social, and global.

The environmental emergency of the last century has led to an urgent need to reformulate the predominant role of human beings on the planet by undertaking a less anthropocentric design approach. Within this theoretical framework, the book explores the role of Design as a multifaceted discipline capable of exploring the complexity of a changing world, and reconsiders the human being’s position in a pervasive relationship with the contemporary environments through a More-than-Human approach.

Extended store has been a work of mapping the phenomena of digitalization that effects spaces and above all the world of retail. Shops will not disappear in the 21st century, but they will have to change (if they have not already done so) to survive. They will have to evolve by integrating technological solutions that are not only back-end (as they have done so far), but front-end, and therefore available to customers in the shop as in the cases reported in the book.

The book explores evolving perspectives on furniture, interior, spatial and architectural design, providing a multifaceted view of how the design discipline and practice deal with the complex and ever-evolving interplay between the physical and the digital realms. It explores the new frontiers of digitally enhanced design, investigating how computation capabilities impact the design discipline and designers’ thinking and practice, proposing captivating portraits of digitally enhanced design possibilities, from tools and processes to expressive potentials.

This book investigates the role of interior design in the enhancement of the effectiveness of Non-Pharmacological therapies for Alzheimer’s disease care.  The author presents the conceptual model for an environmental system called “Therapeutic Habitat”, meant as a system of environmental interventions, based on tangible and intangible aspects, products and furniture, objects and services. Its aim is to enhance the well-being of people with dementia and stimulate recognition and interaction with the surrounding environment.