Design for Schools

Didactic Project - Undergraduate course in Product Design - IED Roma In collaboration with GAM Gonzagarredi Montessori

Academic year

2025/2026

Partner

A collaborative design game developed with GAM Gonzagarredi Montessori that brings children, teachers and designers together to reimagine the learning spaces of tomorrow.

How can we rethink school spaces by involving the people who use them every day? This is the challenge behind Design for Schools, a project led by lecturer and designer Mauro Del Santo and developed by an interdisciplinary team of IED Roma students in collaboration with GAM Gonzagarredi Montessori, a company specialising in the design and production of furniture for educational spaces. The aim is to create an accessible tool that brings together people of different ages and backgrounds, helping them turn their needs and ideas into practical proposals for learning environments.

The students design a hands-on co-design kit featuring a large magnetic board, scale models of GAM furniture, cards, dice and other game pieces. Miniature tables, chairs and bookshelves can be moved and combined to explore different layouts for classrooms, libraries and workshops. The aim is to give children, teachers and designers a tool to rethink how classrooms, libraries and other school spaces are organised and furnished.

The physical kit is complemented by custom software that recognises the arrangement of pieces on the board and recreates it in 3D. Using artificial intelligence, the system transforms participants' designs into realistic visualisations of the spaces they have imagined.

Bringing together product design, spatial design, visual communication and digital technology, the project uses play to encourage dialogue between designers and school communities. Design for Schools is presented at Maker Faire Rome 2026 through an interactive workshop where visitors of all ages and backgrounds can try out the kit and explore new possibilities for educational spaces.

 

 

Credits

Courses involved: Product Design, Interior Design, Communication Design and Photography

Students: 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.