Design ‘for’ Food. A critical reflection on the role of Design in the next future: the case of Design for the food industry.

The paper explores which could be the opportunities for Design to improve its capability to produce innovation, while giving responses to specific needs in order to face real challenges, developing possible alternatives and imagining new productive connections for the societies of the future. The focus is on the role of Design within the Agri-Food Industry, as one of the most critical and determinant human activities: not only because it meets the primary needs of nutrition, but because from an economic point of view it represents one of the most complex and vast sectors in the world. Nevertheless, until now, Design has been more connected with the cultural vision of Food rather than its productive and consumer issues: an approach that represents, not only an specific interest of designers, but overall an emblematic “drift” of Design epistemic boundaries. The paper reports, in a sort of paradigmatic transition from Food Design to Design ‘for’ Food, a vision of the Design role to overcome the classical vision of the food sector as a simple producer of food stuff and instead considering the relationship between production (agriculture), social needs (nutrition) and the technological and environmental conditions (innovation).