Abstract:

This paper describes the proposal of a new Design Concept, focused on an Environmental System for supporting Lifelong Learning Activities, in Universities and Workplaces.
In such an Environmental System, participants would be called to creatively transform input and information, to Knowledge. Moreover the IDEA (Interior Design Experience Approach) Environmental System should motivate a knowledge-sharing, in order to activate a knowledge co-creation process.
Therefore, due to interior condition (Universities and working places), a strongly flexible modularity is required for such Environmental System, in order to develop an interior that can be configured and modified "on the fly".
To satisfy such a requirement the IDEA- Environmental System would be developed mixing new educational methods, new technology’s opportunities, and above all human sensibility. In fact, knowledge would be managed, and created, using visual, acoustic and tactile feedbacks among participants. From the technical point of view, the elements of the IDEA Environmental System for Lifelong Learning, would allow to set the right environmental condition concerning light, sound, air conditioning, etc., according with needs and actions.
Within the proposed new Design Concept, two issues are playing an very important role. From one hand the topics related with “Design Primario”, the approach developed from the Italian Radical Movement which take particular care to the “soft qualities” of an environment, and from which point of view those qualities (soft, intangible, immaterial, but strongly related with human sensibility) are considered part of the project. From other hand, the strong importance that LifeLong Learning represents for our present and, above all for our future, as key factor to improve our capability to create, manage and share, a new knowledge. Both the issues are focused on a new centrality of human being, in relation with knowledge and spaces.
Our age is represented by a diffuse and widespread presence of inputs and information, which should be transformed in knowledge. This phenomenon will characterized the rest of our life, and the life of our soon. Being in touch with our fluid knowledge system became even more inescapable.

Keywords:

design, innovation, environmental system, lifelong learning, university.