IED Projects Featured in the ADI Design Index 2025

Date

16 October 2025

For the Design for Social category, The Glitch Camp was selected — the first free urban camping experience for students during Milan Design Week. For the Targa Giovani award, product design projects from IED Roma and Milano entries.

Four IED projects have been included in the ADI Design Index 2025, the annual selection curated by the Permanent Design Observatory that gathers the best products and projects standing out in the contemporary Italian design scene.

In the Design for Social category, The Glitch Camp has been selected — the free urban camping project designed by IED to host students from all over the world in Milan during Design Week.
Competing for the Targa Giovani award are Relie, a product design project developed within the IED Milano Product Design course, and Galacticgym and A occhi chiusi from IED Roma.

THE GLITCH CAMP IN THE ADI DESIGN INDEX 2025

The Glitch Camp is a free urban camping project created to host design students from all over the world visiting Milan during Design Week.
Thanks to the collaboration with the City of Milan and Milanosport, the Istituto Europeo di Design – a Benefit Corporation owned by the non-profit Francesco Morelli Foundation – contributed to making Milan Design Week more accessible with this initiative.

The project’s goal was to make the creative and relational heritage that comes to life in Milan each year during Design Week more democratic and widely shared.

The term glitch represents a disturbance, an error, a bug that can generate an unexpected advantage — an anomaly that creates opportunity. The Glitch Camp embodies this concept: it turns the challenges of accommodation into a social and educational opportunity, finding value within constraint and creating spaces for exchange and growth.

The camp was also designed to ensure low environmental and economic impact, emphasizing the circular use of materials. Every partner and supplier involved was encouraged to make conscious design and production choices — from reusing graphics for signage and wayfinding, to employing Ferrino Tent Set eco-designed tents, and IKEA materials for common areas, later donated for reuse.

The Glitch Camp was developed with the support of Piano B, an agency actively committed to reducing the environmental impact of events through sustainable production practices.

TARGA GIOVANI AWARDS BY THE ADI DESIGN INDEX 2025

Relie — developed within the IED Milano Product Design course on the macro-theme of addictions — was conceived to support parents during one of the earliest and most meaningful stages of a child’s development: the separation from the pacifier, whose overuse may negatively affect oral and linguistic growth. Former students Mattia Renzo, Fabrizio Vairo, and Francesco Tagliabue drew inspiration from the widespread practice of cutting the pacifier to gradually reduce the child’s satisfaction. From this observation came the idea of a safe product designed to decrease the pleasure of sucking step by step, leading to spontaneous rejection within the first year of life.

The system unfolds in two stages: growth and separation.
During the first nine months, the pacifier evolves alongside the baby’s development, offering three models that change every three months to match the physiological growth of the mouth. From the ninth month onward, the separation phase begins, articulated into three monthly steps. Each model progressively reduces the softness and size of the nipple, making sucking less rewarding and encouraging the child to find new forms of comfort. To enhance effectiveness, bright colors and playful shapes — which tend to attract children — are abandoned, while the grip is intentionally designed to be less ergonomic than traditional pacifiers, discouraging its use as a toy and reducing unnecessary reliance. The minimalist design appeals to modern parents who value health, well-being, and the aesthetic consistency of everyday objects. Its monomaterial structure ensures safety, hygiene, and easy cleaning. The UV sterilizing case also tracks pacifier usage time through presence detection; when the daily limit is exceeded, a red LED alerts the parent. A dedicated app provides continuous guidance, allowing parents to follow the separation process, access educational content, and receive personalized advice. This approach not only supports the child but also educates parents, promoting a shared journey of growth between them.

Galacticgym, designed by IED Rome students Siqi Yang, Jiyou Zhang, and Jiani Yemira, aims to develop wearable devices to prevent and treat muscle atrophy caused by lunar microgravity. It is a fitness system that provides a complete set of equipment to train the most vulnerable muscle groups, particularly those in the legs. The training modules follow a gradual approach: the load starts at 60% of body weight and increases up to 85–100%.

A occhi chiusi (“Eyes Closed”), by Daniele Abbati of IED Rome, is a collection of nine games to be played blindfolded, designed from experiences with visually impaired children but intended to foster learning for everyone. The educational project, developed in collaboration with MUSE – the Science Museum of Trento, stimulates memory, orientation, and alternative sensory languages, with particular emphasis on touch. Bare Foot, All in Five, and SenseQuest are examples, respectively focusing on spatial memory, dyslexia, and perceptual rehabilitation. The project challenges contemporary visual overstimulation, restoring centrality to multisensory interaction as a path toward more inclusive and conscious cognitive growth.