Focus on the role of users is the heart of the ongoing research experience in the university Living Lab environment that investigates, systematises and tests the potential of the latest digital technologies in the construction sector (BIM-sensors-Digital Twin-IoT) to define enabling building-user interfaces that support the virtuous circle of energy efficiency/environmental well-being/proactive behaviour. Synchronising the real building/virtual model allows an augmented environmental experience and new levels of user involvement. It enriches the predictive systems of data-user experience, helping to calibrate the configuration of improvement scenarios in the design/operational phase on well-being objectives, expanding the awareness of the process actors for a new centrality of the decision as an ethical value.

In recent decades, the global fashion and textile market has been facing an unprecedented sector-wide crisis. The growing demand for clothing, combined with continuously decreasing prices and driven by the constant availability of new quantities and styles, has allowed fast fashion and super-fast fashion business models to flood the market with low-quality, short-lived, and high environmental impact products. Starting from 1 January 2025, the separate collection of textile waste came into force in the European Union. However, under current conditions, this regulatory change has generated an imbalance between collection capacity and the availability of effective sorting and recycling channels. Furthermore, due to the low market demand for recycled fibers, warehouses and landfills are increasingly filling with post-consumer textile waste, materials that could potentially serve as secondary raw materials but currently remain unsold. Moreover, the fast fashion business model promotes the use of short fibers and complex fiber blends that are resource-intensive and generate large volumes of low-quality waste. This material profile further limits reuse and recycling options, exacerbating inefficiencies within existing waste management systems. This review aims to identify and discuss available opportunities to address textile waste containing low-quality fibers through the examination of scientific literature, technical publications, and market-ready products that utilize regenerated textile materials. The results highlight open-loop applications and processes, such as those in the automotive, building, and design sectors, thereby opening to new end-of-life scenarios for waste textiles.

This work explores the role of design in supporting public administrations to set up local-based NetZero city strategies. In particular the paper presents the design-led participatory process designed and led by the Service Design Lab team (authors) to support the Municipality of Prato in preparing the baseline for the Climate City Contract. Based on four pillars (energy efficiency, sustainable mobility, circular economy, agriculture and land use, urban forestry), the process aimed at spotting systemic barriers and laying the groundwork to co-design a portfolio of actions aimed at achieving carbon neutrality by the year 2030. The strategy supporting the process was based on two main phases (understanding the system and co-designing a portfolio) connected by an intermediary bridging phase, and another cross-cutting level of inquiry itself consisting of two stages: the front-end (the local-based facilitation process) and the back-end (the systemic interconnectedness process). Lastly we highlight the limitations of the process and the key takeaways of participatory infrastructuring actions, and specifically the benefits for the Municipality in establishing meaningful and context-based impact pathways.