Transformimg waste in industrial design products for social vulnerable groups: Teaching industrial design based on real projects, a project based learning experience in Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto

The University of Porto, Portugal, started in the academic year 2013/2014 a Master Program in Product and Industrial Design, which is a partnership between the Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Fine Arts. This new program that replaced a previous Master Program in Industrial Design from Faculty of Engineering, was conceived with a different philosophy, seeking to join designers and engineers in a multi-disciplinar y methodology. The syllabus was sought to “transfer” know-how between those two backgrounds and develop projects, supported in project-based learning principles, in the two main courses; Project Design and Project in Industrial Design. This work explains the main operation principles of the course and presents the results of a project settled in partnership with the Municipality of Matosinhos, in Porto, Portugal, which was developed to design artifacts based on recycling the waste produced by activities of that city. The goal was also to create low cost products in an attempt to generate profit for the poorest communities in the region.