At Maker Faire Rome 2026, IED presents a co-design toolkit that combines play, design and artificial intelligence to rethink schools starting from the needs of the people who experience them every day.
Design for Schools: a game to design the school of the future
Date
15 October 2026
How can we rethink schools by starting from the needs of those who use them every day? This question inspired Design for Schools, a project developed by students from IED Roma in collaboration with GAM Gonzagarredi Montessori, which will be presented from 23 to 25 October at Maker Faire Rome – The European Edition 2026, at Rome's Gazometro Ostiense.
The project addresses a key challenge in contemporary education: creating an effective dialogue between those who design learning environments and those who use them on a daily basis. Designers, teachers and students bring different yet complementary perspectives, and the exchange between these viewpoints is the first step towards imagining learning spaces that are more inclusive, flexible and responsive to today's educational needs.
To encourage this process, the IED team chose the universal language of play. The result is a co-design toolkit that transforms ideas, needs and aspirations into tangible spatial configurations. Through modular elements representing school furniture and functions, participants can experiment with different solutions for classrooms, libraries and laboratories, collaboratively building alternative scenarios for the school of the future.
Technology plays a key role in enhancing the experience. Dedicated software recognises the configurations created by participants and converts them into three-dimensional models. Thanks to the use of artificial intelligence, ideas take shape in real time, providing an immediate visualisation of the imagined spaces and facilitating discussion among the different design solutions.
Coordinated by designer and faculty member Mauro Del Santo, the project was developed by Lisa Gaia Bucchieri, Isabella Chica Meneses, Sara Contadini, Francesco Donarelli, Sofia Fiacconi, Arianna Iannone, Roberta L'Erario, Marco Lutta, Federico Pirro, Gioacchino Salierno and Francesco Sassi, students from the Product Design, Interior Design, Communication Design and Photography Bachelor of Arts at IED Roma.
Visitors will be able to discover and experience the project firsthand at Area S, Booth 14-15 of Maker Faire Rome, actively contributing to the creation of new learning environments and exploring new approaches to participatory design.
Maker Faire Rome – The European Edition 2026
23–25 October 2026
Gazometro Ostiense
Via del Commercio 9-11, Rome
Ticket information available here.
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