Brands MUSA - Living Lab Tessile

MUSA, Multilayered Urban Sustainability Action, was born in Milan as a response to the challenges that the metropolitan reality faces in the transition towards the three dimensions of sustainability: environmental, economic, and social. And with an ambition: to inaugurate a new model of public-private collaboration that can be replicated at the national and international levels. MUSA identifies the Lombardy territory as an ideal laboratory for experimenting with integrated innovations and planning interdisciplinary responses that act on multiple fronts of urban management: environmental, where urban development must respect and strengthen biodiversity and promote optimal solutions for energy and sustainable mobility; technological, with the still untapped potential of digitalization and deep tech; and economic and financial, in which sustainable education and finance are assuming increasingly central roles.

The Living Lab Textile 'Too Cool To Go Wasted', in line with the recent 'Strategy for a Sustainable and Circular Textile Industry' promoted by the European Commission, recognizes the textile sector as one of the most relevant to promote the transition towards sustainable and circular models along the entire value chain, from production to distribution and consumption.

The Living Lab is closely integrated into the territorial context, involving citizens, enterprises, universities, research centres and public administration to co-create new services, products and social infrastructures. This collaborative approach, which follows the quadruple helix model, uses iterative feedback processes during the innovation life cycle to generate sustainable impact. The objective of the Living Lab is to put the user community at the centre to develop innovative solutions to specific social needs in the textile sector. It is oriented towards public-private co-design and supporting the open innovation ecosystem. Within this integrated space, citizens, businesses, universities and government collaborate to create new services, products and social infrastructures through co-creation processes.

The Living Lab "Too cool to go wasted" involves 3 departments of the Politecnico di Milano: