The Interdepartmental Center Sapienza Design Research SDR is a place of excellence for multidisciplinary research and experimentation for Design-driven Technological and Social Innovation.
The focus of SDR research is rethinking the social, economic, and environmental impact of production and consumption processes and developing real innovation that serves the productive and institutional system.
Sapienza Design Research is the first Interdepartmental University Center in Italy dedicated to Design-driven Innovation.
According to the STEAM approach, Sapienza Design Research develops multidisciplinary research, including in collaboration with partners outside the university, designs events for dissemination to the general public according to the principles of the "third mission," and curates and promotes extracurricular educational projects for continuing education.
Mission
The SDR Center expresses the need and desire of Sapienza University of Rome to offer a venue for the scientific and organizational valorization of research in the field of design. Both nationally and internationally, design, despite being based on the convergence of different disciplinary contributions, has acquired an advanced level of knowledge, an autonomous system of skills, and, above all, strategic recognition by the social, productive, and economic systems.
The disciplinary contributions that converge at the SDR Center, from the more specific aspects of artifact design to those of the "belt" of physical and virtual representation, materials technology and production processes, and information technology, are widely tested in international research and demonstrate the disciplinary richness of Design in its broadest sense. Design is thus recognized as one of the key skills fundamental to the construction and development of societies, not only present but also, and above all, future ones.
The mission of the Sapienza Interdepartmental Center for Design Research is to develop research and experimentation projects in the field of Design for the benefit of Technological and Social Innovation. Specifically, the activities will fall within the methodological framework defined as Advanced Design, recognized and applied in the most important international design research centers (Europe, China, Japan, North America). Advanced Design, thanks to multidisciplinary convergence, is able to develop technological innovation consistent with the potential of production systems and integrate it sustainably into consumption and social development scenarios.
Considering that the proposed Interdepartmental Center makes interdisciplinarity its cornerstone, particular attention is given both to strategic collaboration with Italian institutions and the production system, as well as to scientific exchange, and also with the national and international research system in this sector.
The objectives of the Sapienza Interdepartmental Center for Design and Research are specifically:
- research into scenarios for new innovation platforms for the development of post-industrial societies, with particular attention to the cultural implications of communication processes based on new digital tools and the implications for production and consumption processes resulting from the application of emerging technologies (including the application of the results of micro-, nano-, and biotechnological research);
- the experimental development of new products with high technological, typological, and performance levels, with a focus on environmental, social, and economic sustainability, both in the design, modeling, and engineering phases, as well as in production and consumption.