Towards Circular Upholstery: Practice-based Research for the Circular Transition of the Made in Italy Upholstered Furniture Sector

In Made in Italy industries, craft and industry production coexist, with a continuous relationship between manual technical knowledge and the use of advanced machines. The use of material is fundamental, Italian design has a recognized aesthetic and material imagery because it experiments with materials from the noblest to the most artificial. In this context, the theme of circularity and sustainability is not always central: traditional upholstered products are a conglomerate of components made of different materials whose disposal hardly ever involves disassembly and reuse or repair processes. Through experimentation of circular re-design of an upholstered seat carried out by the author, the article proposes reflections on how to integrate design practices that can allow a circular and sustainable transition of the upholstered product. In the research, Circular Design, an approach capable of shifting perspective between user needs and the systemic implications of the process, is a central discipline of application and study. The anticipatory attributes of Advanced Design and Transition Design are also key disciplines involved. The practice-based methodology used makes it possible to integrate desk and field research and to verify it through an experimentation that aims to be an object of future design vision. The intention is to open the discussion on what strategies the designer can implement to support a circular and sustainable transition of systems products in sectors where experimentation is part of traditional production