Teaching sustainability through materials

The ITESO experience

The assumption that a practice-based learning process involving materials could be the key to better fostering student’s awareness of materials’ sustainability was the basis of the proposal of a syllabus developed for the course “Circular Materials”, held together with Prof. Jared Jimenez at ITESO University in Guadalajara (Mexico), where I was invited to teach as an international professor (a.y. 2020/2021). The syllabus connected the concepts of sustainability, DIY-Materials, biofabrication, and bioreceptivity. The decision to merge these topics in a syllabus came from the awareness that these three design approaches share design methodologies and sustainability principles (see Pollini & Jimenez, 2022). The objective of the course was to express the potentialities of material design in design education to foster sustainability awareness in young designers. With a solid practice-based approach aimed at guiding the students through three workshops based on practical activities, the course focused on the possibility of creating sustainable
materials in a crescendo of complexity: starting with the experimentation of DIYMaterials based on local waste and resources, continuing with the experience of growing living materials such as bacterial cellulose and mycelium; concluding the learning-by-doing path with bioreceptive materials, combining living and inert materials aimed at encouraging biodiversity, biophilia and local bioremediation practices. The original contribution of the proposed syllabus lies in having defined a global educational approach for local material solutions and tools to enhance designers’ sustainability awareness through hands-on material experimentation.