Portuguese students participated in multidisciplinary workshop on Product Design within Circular Economy

This workshop with Portuguese Product Designers had the participation of around 30 Master’s students from the University of Aveiro (UA), from various backgrounds, such as Design, Economics, Management, Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Sustainable Energy Systems and Chemical Engineering.

The purpose of this event was to present the new multidisciplinary curricular unit of the University of Aveiro, that will be available as an optional course to UA master’s students, entitled: Product Design within Circular Economy. This curricular unit will be used for the testing of the contents developed within the project.

The coordinators of KATCH_e project – LNEG, participated with a presentation about the results of the project and the resources that will be available to the student’s community; and Amorim Cork Composites, another partner of the project presented its proposal to integrate students from UA in an internship, and also provided raw material and technical support for the participants work on this day.

This workshop purposed to highlight the contributions of various fields of study to the development of innovative products towards Circular Economy. The designers invited where related to product/furniture Design, with prestigious works with wood and cork:

– DAM (www.dam.pt);

– Alexandre Kumagai – De la Espada (www.delaespada.com);

– Miguel Vieira Baptista (www.miguelvieirabaptista.com) and

– Toni Grilo (www.tonigrilo.com).

The objective of the activity was to develop a proposal of a cork product by multidisciplinary teams guided by invited designers, with the technical support of Amorim Cork Composites.

The workshop was developed in two parts: a first one, to generate ideas and develop the proposals and a second one, for prototyping and presentation of the results. The four groups presented very different projects, from a coffee table, a swing for children, a marsupial for carrying babies and personal protection aids using thermal and acoustic properties of cork.

Conclusions on this workshop noted the relevance of this multidisciplinary work developed, for the different approaches every scientific field brings, and also for the cooperation it ensues for a better product/service.

Through a questionnaire distributed in the end of the event, it was also possible to access the perception of the participants about receiving training and specific qualifications on CE: more than half answered they received such training within their university degree, but on the other hand, the same percentage noted that they do not have enough qualifications to integrate Circular Economy in Design, development and innovation processes. These reflections on the training related to CE received in the University in Aveiro lead to the significance of the KATCH_e project objectives and the contents currently being developed.