Neo-Local design. Looking at ‘our local contexts’ as potential resources

Our research efforts in design are inherently linked to our peculiar standpoint: Sardinia, the island in which live and work. Our region presents in fact a set of conditions that, we believe, can make it a working laboratory for exploring new development models, investigating the power of design and innovation to combine local identity and knowledge, contemporary needs and sustainability. A complex layering of specific historical and geographical facts have contributed to giving shape in Sardinia to a context which is quite unique in the whole of Europe. Over the last few years, this lead us to develop 'Neo-Local design', a concept about exploring ways to combine the potential of design as an innovation force with the values and skills of the local dimension. Through the discussion of some experimental projects we have carried out recently in our Design School, we wish to present our very specific point of view within a broader emerging debate. The paper will focus on new ways to interpret elements such as local knowledge and culture that we though were lost by the effects of the simplification of modernism in the first place and, more recently, by the homogenization of globalization, and that are instead making today place for themselves as valuable agents in the rethinking of the contribution of design to our society.