The economy of design in Italy, the capital of Milan, sustainability is a challenge - Lifestyle

The design sector in Italy

has 30 thousand companies,

, which generated an added value of 2.5 billion euros in 2020 with 61 thousand employees.

The companies are distributed throughout the national territory, with a particular concentration in the areas of specialization of Made in Italy and in the regions of Lombardy, Piedmont, Emilia - Romagna and Veneto, where 60% of the companies are located.

Among the provinces, Milan (15% companies and 18% national added value) stand out, Rome (6.7% and 5.3%), Turin (5 and 7.8%).

44% of companies operate abroad (8.9% outside the EU), 45% on a national scale, while 10.8% on a local scale.

These are some of the numbers of the report on the

of the Symbola Foundation with Deloitte Private and POLI.design

The main capital of Italian design is Milan: the Lombard capital is capable of concentrating 18% of the sector's added value on the national territory.

Milan is also home to the Salone del Mobile and Fuorisalone, one of the largest events in the world dedicated to design which this year celebrates its sixtieth edition.

This trend is coupled with the general one, given that companies and design professionals carry out their activities mainly in metropolitan centers, where they have the opportunity to enjoy greater national and international visibility.

In fact, four out of ten design companies operate abroad (44%, 8.9% outside the EU), while the remainder operates mainly at national level (45%) or, to a lesser extent, only on a local scale (10, 8%).

As stated by Logotel, to face sustainability today a cultural approach is necessary, which helps the Italian entrepreneurial fabric to get in touch with a new generation of problems and needs.

Being truly sustainable will increasingly imply going out of a dimension focused only on the design and optimization of products (or parts of them).

It is a change in which design can play a crucial role.

While the majority of designers and design companies feel overall prepared on the subject, declaring high (33.9%) and medium level (55.1%) skills, the offer for sustainability currently focuses on

(57 , 6%) and secondly on the

43.4%), as evidenced by the results of the survey conducted for the 2022 edition of the report.

The meeting point between supply and demand for design services is already concretized today in the

and the optimization of the use of resources, identified as the main priorities to which design is called to respond in the field of sustainability by companies and designers interviewed in the study who operate in these areas.

Among the sectors that drive the demand for sustainable design services there are above all the Made in Italy sectors.

sector stands out

(70%), followed by automotive (56%), real estate - ceramics, floors, up to structural elements - (38%), clothing (30%) and agri-food (13.3%).  

The growing environmental awareness and the consequent importance that the market - especially the one to come - attaches to environmental aspects

This is demonstrated by various concrete examples put in place by both associations, such as

(with the “Decalogue” that maps the demand for eco design services) or Comieco (with an investigation into the characteristics of the packs used by restaurants);

both by companies, such as

(with the Pop.Up Next project, in the field of sustainable mobility) or

, to give a second life to unsold clothing);

and by designers such as Mario Cucinella (in the context of optimizing the performance of the building, such as for the Iperceramica headquarters).

Italian training in the field of Design

The training system is a system distributed throughout the country,

accredited by the Ministry of Education: 22 Universities, 16 Academies of Fine Arts, 15 Legally Recognized Academies, 22 Private Institutes authorized to issue AFAM (Higher Education in Art and Music) and 6 ISIA (Higher Institutes for Art Industries) qualifications.

For a total of 291 courses of study, distributed in various educational levels and in different areas of specialization.

It includes peaks of excellence such as the Politecnico di Milano, first among the EU countries and 5th in the world according to the prestigious QS World University Rankings by Subject in the design sector, but first, however, among public universities.

Afterwards, the European Institute of Design (IED) and the New Academy of Fine Arts (NABA) maintain an important role in the training of the designer.

Overall,

of these, two thirds reside in the North, particularly in Lombardy (49.8%).

From this year, thanks to the collaboration with Almalaurea and the Career Service of the Politecnico di Milano, an additional piece of information has been added regarding the work situation five years after graduation and five years after our first report on design.

The first

five-year master's degree graduates in design returns a value of

, higher than the average of the total of two-year master's degree graduates in Italy;

of these, 84% carry out a profession consistent with the field of design.

“In the midst of a green and digital transition - declares Ermete Realacci, president of the Symbola Foundation - accelerated by the pandemic and

Many aspects of our life, as well as many sectors, will change, from

towards shared, interconnected and electric models, to the processes of

that are changing industry and supply chain relationships, arriving at products that, in a context of increasingly scarce resources, will necessarily have to be redesigned to become more durable, repairable, reusable.

The design economy report this year dedicates a chapter to the relationship between the Italian sector and sustainability, the relationship at the base of the

launched by President Von der Leyen in 2020 to contribute to the realization of the European Green Deal.

Because, as written in the Assisi Manifesto, facing the climate crisis with courage is not only necessary but represents a great opportunity to make our economy and our society more on a human scale and therefore more capable of the future ".

“In our country - states Ernesto Lanzillo, Deloitte Private Leader - Design can be a fundamental lever for rethinking and orienting the strategy of the entire business organization from a sustainable perspective.

From the review of products and processes, to create value by making the use of resources more efficient and directing technological and managerial innovation, to the definition of an ESG corporate identity and its communication to stakeholders.

The entire sector can help to redefine the future of companies in all sectors, especially those of Made in Italy, but to do so we need to think about targeted actions, which allow the realities of Design to continue to grow, strengthening their structure and developing a business culture.

Furthermore, sustainable businesses are more resilient and grow faster than companies that do not introduce such practices.

This will be a particularly relevant factor, not only in light of the development priorities of European and national plans such as Next Generation EU and PNRR, but also to address moments of uncertainty and discontinuity such as the ones we are experiencing at this stage ".

“In the face of powerful phenomena of change taking place - declared Francesco Zurlo, president of POLI.

design and dean of the School of Design - from the climate crisis to digital transformation, to the difficult geopolitical context, design - which is the practice of an intellectual operator - seems to be better equipped than other disciplines and professions in governing complexity.

The success of the training and placement of designers, as evident in the Foundation's report, underlines this aspect ".