Last February 9th and 10th took place the kick-off event of the advanced course “Design for Sustainability in the Manufacturing Sector”, at Elisava, Barcelona School of Design and Engineering.

The first day of the kick-off event started with a brief introduction from Prof. Giuseppe Lotti, INTRIDE scientific coordinator. The event, open for the whole design community of Barcelona, took place with the keynote speakers: Rita Almendra (professor at FAU Universidade Lisboa) regarding “Academy. Competences in Design Education”; Pere Llonch (CEO of VIBIA) “Lighting Business”; and Guillermo Santomà (Designer) “Radical Creativity”. Afterwards Laura Clèries, Director at Elisava Research hosted a roundtable to discuss the role of the designer as an agent of change in a European future environment.

The second day was intended to present this advanced course to the 20 participants selected by the INTRIDE partners. Albert Fuster, Academic Director at Elisava, started the day with a warm welcome and a focus on the designer role in the contemporary scenario. Later representatives by the universities and clusters involved in INTRIDE project presented the programme content and Cristina Taverner, Elisava’s Project Manager of INTRIDE offered the presentation of the operative programme.

Professors Gaston Lisak and George Ciprian oversaw two different workshops, one regarding ‘Teambuilding’ and the other related to the ‘Final Project approach’.This advanced course – together with the community platform – is the final output of INTRIDE, project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union led by the Department of Architecture – DIDA of the University of Florence and involving 8 other partners – universities, VET institutions and sectoral associations – from 4 European countries to train designers with soft, digital, and green skills.