The SDR Center expresses the need and the will of Sapienza University of Rome to offer a venue for scientific and organizational enhancement of research in the field of Design. In both the national and international contexts, Design, while constituting itself 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 system.

The disciplinary contributions that converge in the SDR Center, from the most typical of the project of artefacts to those of the "belt" of physical and virtual representation, of materials technology and production processes, of information technologies, are widely tested in international research and demonstrate the disciplinary richness of Design in its broad meaning. Design is thus recognized as one of the fundamental Key-Knowledge for the construction and development of societies, not only present but also and above all future ones.

The mission of the Sapienza Design Research Interdepartmental Center is to develop research and experimentation projects in the field of Design in favor of Technological and Social Innovation. In particular, the activities will fall into that methodological declination defined Advanced Design, recognized and applied in the most important Research Centers in the field of Design at an international level (Europe, China, Japan, North America). Thanks to multidisciplinary convergence, Advanced Design is able to develop technological innovation consistent with the potential of production systems and insert it in a sustainable form within consumption and social development scenarios.

Considering that the proposed Interdepartmental Center makes interdisciplinarity its backbone, particular attention will be given both to strategic collaboration with the institutions and the production system of our country as to scientific exchange but also with the national and international system of research in this sector.

The aims proposed by the Sapienza Design Research Interdepartmental Center for the renewal request are, divided into the following areas of innovation, valid as Research Lines: scenario research of 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 to the implications on production and consumption processes due to the application of emerging technologies (including applications of the results of micro and nano-technological and biotechnological research); experimental development of new products with a high technological, typological and performance level with attention to environmental, social and economic sustainability both in the design, modeling and engineering phases, as well as in those of production and consumption.