DUCKY is a group project developed during the third year of the Product Design Laboratory. We wanted to create a design language which makes robots more warm and friendly looking.

In fact, although the course had a strong focus on engineering, we decided to concentrate instead on the aesthetic, exploring how thoughtful design could help improve the social acceptance of robotic life forms in public environments.

That's how DUCKY was born — a robotic duck designed for public gardens, equipped with multiple facial expressions, sounds, and interactive behaviors to create a sense of familiarity and playfulness.

PH: Pietro Muzi Falconi

Rooted in the philosophy of biocentrism, the project aims to raise awareness among students about the many life forms inhabiting the Design Campus in Calenzano — reminding us that humans are not the only residents of this space. To bring this idea to life, we created an Instagram page where we posted zoomed photos of the tiniest life forms we could find around.

AEKING is my bachelor’s graduation project — a fictional utopian scenario based on IKEA. The thesis explores how sustainable end-of-life flows can be created for IKEA furniture through community-led hacking practices, with the ultimate goal of avoiding landfill waste entirely. .

To bring this concept to life, I designed a mock IKEA web platform, along with its visual identity and graphic guidelines. The platform allows users to creatively extend the lifespan of their furniture in multiple ways.

During this project I was really attracted to the philosophy of "hacking" objects, especially the ones that are common, like the famous BILLY. DORIK, is a open source 3D hack which helps to avoid chipboards shelves from bending.

In the "Information Design and Visual Storytelling" course held by Alessia Musio, we decided to answer with data to the question "Is social media actually a bad thing for your mental health?". The result is a poster layouted as a newspaper page.

By analyzing scientific papers and academic articles, we created a final poster that offers an overview of the positive and negative relationships between social media use and mental health. Throughout this project, we deepened our understanding of data culture, learned how to use data to tell compelling stories, and explored new tools such as RawGraphs and Flourish.

For the storytelling component, we developed a data physicalization titled “85” — a collection of 85 Instagram Reels printed on fabric. The number 85 represents the average number of Reels an Instagram user watches in a day.

The CARE(FULL) INSTRUMENTS project is a collaborative work that involved OfficineVispa in the Don Bosco Community of Bolzano. Utilizing an ethnographic approach, the project engaged with social workers form OfficineVispa, using role play methods to develope the final design. The brief consisted in developing games for a method called "Apprendimento esperenziale".

The "TUBE RUN" is 1 out of the 4 games we developed togheter, which express at his best the CI of this project. The CMF is approached from a limit perspective: we decided to use only cardboard tubes offcuts from print shop to develope the game. Therefore, the finishing choice was fundamental: a bright color and a silky touch feel. The game, also, is contained in a practical net that can be opened by pulling a cord, spreading all the tubes on the ground. The net is up-cycled from apple industry present in South Tyrol, where the project was developed.

The scalable version of the project takes shape in a wooden box which contains the tools to create the games and a complete guide with instructions. Right now Officine Vispa is using the project and some blueprints are already shared in the social workers network in Trento.

“MaMa” stands for Material Matters. Is a no profit association, UniBz student runned, which aim to reduce waste produced in the context of the university of Bolzano, and teach students sustainable design principle. In design school, a lot of offcuts are produced due to the model making process: what we do is collect, sort and stock all of those offcuts that are still usable and organize them as they are in a shop, improving accessibility to the material.

Time by time, a community was created. One of the coolest thing we have done was developing a kart system for the university with the XYZ system together with his creator, Till Wolfer. In this photo you can see some of the people that runs the iniatitve, which now counts more than 20 people.

You can follow the project here

MOLTITUDINE is a material exploration of a new surface, where waste from the earplug industry with shape memory characteristics are repurposed to create a soft and colorful surface.

The earplugs are embedded in a Kraftplex matrix (a glue-free multilayer paper material), allowing the possibility of separating the matrix from the polyurethane foam components, facilitating future destructive disassembly (using water paper fall apart easily).

The project makes possible to reuse pre-consumer waste in polyurethane foam that would otherwise be destined for waste-to-energy or landfill. The project also develops from an innovative method: only after the study of the waste and its characteristics (even on a microscopic level) the developement of the design start.

The packaging designed for the project consists in a do-it-yourself kit concept, where the final user can build the surface and "hack"" a seat or backrest.

In a 2 workshop we developed a chair based on the blueprints from the book "Autocostruzione" by Enzo Mari. My work reflect on the lifespan of objects and components gerarchy. The backrest is a mattres offcut, folded and stucked between 2 pieces of woood: this guarantee accessibility, facilitating maintenance.