EDUCATING FOR INNOVATIVE SUSTAINABLE DESIGN

Current trends indicate that humanity is in the midst of the largest migration in its history to and from cities in preparation for the creation of mega cities, which are cities with over 10,000,000 inhabitants. Since the living space will be limited, the personal housing space will be smaller and the quantities of garbage, especially textile waste, will increase massively. The challenge for engineers and designers together will be to plan products more intelligently with variable functionality within the circular economy idea.

Circular Economy addresses supply chain, new raw materials, social initiatives and innovative business models to comply with the idea of the circularity of products, thus, planning products combining both disciplines for addressing design as well as business issues.

At Shenkar, College of Engineering Design and Art we promote multidisciplinary courses of engineering and design students that address social challenges. In this regard, a special interdisciplinary program provides the students from all schools to learn together in courses given by lecturers from the different schools. In the course, “Smart Textile in the Urban Space: New Business Models” multidisciplinary teams of engineering and design students learnt the differences between upcycling vs. recycling and downcycling and were exposed to a wide variety of types of textiles today, from traditional textiles to smart textiles containing biological or technological components. In addition they learnt about design thinking, business models, branding, textile and plastics’ innovative ideas, the supply chain and the life cycle assessment.

The students got familiar with the Cradle to Cradle movement and new initiatives that currently take place around the world.

The students had to cope with the challenges of:

1. How can a circular life cycle be produced for a textile product that is different from the traditional product cycle?
2. How these innovative textile products can accommodate a limited living space?
3. What kind of new and profitable business models can be developed in this context?

The course was delivered in a studio format, hence, students researched and worked on their concepts while consulting with the course’s lecturers. They initiated and offered, while experimenting with the principles of design thinking, an innovative business and / or a social model based on textile that addresses the future challenges of the city, in areas such as health, education, transportation, and more.

We invited specialists from various disciplines (Architexture, Design, Engineering, Municipality and more) who provided first hand challenges and perspectives on the subject.

Exposing Industrial Engineering and Management students to such learning experience gives them the opportunity to develop attitude toward responsible management that considers human aspects, sustainability and business outcomes as a whole. Several human and economic institutions, such as the UN and Forbes are currently promoting Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda for a better world and business outcome.