Programme: Horizon Europe
Project duration: 36 months (starting May 2026)
Coordinator: FabLab Barcelona at IAAC

RED&Pro brings together designers, producers, communities, and institutions to explore regenerative forms of design practice. The project seeks to reframe design as a situated ecological and cultural practice, moving beyond sustainability towards approaches centred on living systems and reciprocal relationships. It aims to establish a European regenerative design framework that brings together ecological regeneration, social participation, and economic resilience. Through experimentation in six bioregional labs, the project will develop evidence, methodologies, and practices that can be shared through distributed educational models and open digital infrastructures, supporting the broader uptake of regenerative practices across the globe.

RED&Pro is a 36-month Horizon Europe research and innovation project that takes this condition as its starting point. Rather than proposing incremental improvements, it advances a substantive shift: from sustainability as a baseline standard towards regenerative design as a new cultural orientation — one that places ecological restoration, social equity, and heritage knowledge at the centre of design research and practice. Its methodological foundations draw on Research through Design and Commons-Based Peer Production, treating the act of designing not merely as professional output but as a mode of inquiry capable of generating knowledge, challenging norms, and producing durable change.

The projects objectives are to:

• Design, Validate and make accessible a Regenerative Design Framework that leverages an inclusive, interdisciplinary, heritage-driven approach in local design and production ecosystems.
• Support the emergence and cultivate hybrid design professionals by equipping them with future-proof skills that bridge environmental care, cultural sensitivity, and emerging technologies to build the next generation expert workforce to drive innovation and tackle Europe’s next decade’s challenges.
• Prototype bioregional regenerative design and production hubs (RED-Labs) as living laboratories for education and professionalisation to foster a shift toward prosumer-based models that stimulate designs that are socially, ecologically, and economically sustainable and scalable.

At the heart of RED&Pro are six experimental RED-Labs, place-based and bioregional production ecosystems located in Denmark, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Ukraine. Each lab pairs an urban design hub with a rural, nature-based partner, exploring what circularity, material reuse, and bio-based sourcing can look like across the whole value chain in each respective context; learning from one another and identifying the particular potential of each.

The Regenerative Design Framework, developed through and validated by these pilots, will be codified into the Hybrid Design Academy: a capacity-building programme for practitioners, educators, and institutions. Alongside this, a federated open-source Regenerative Design Repository will integrate material intelligence tools to make regenerative practices transparent, traceable, and replicable at scale.

RED&Pro is coordinated by Fab Lab Barcelona at IAAC and brings together 13 partner organisations across nine countries: TU Eindhoven, Simon Fraser University, the New Production Institute at Helmut Schmidt University, Maker Copenhagen, OpenDot Foundation, Center Rog, Metalab, EIT Culture & Creativity, Spot Materials, designaustria, FutureDays, and Here Partners.

Financer: Creative Europe Programme (CREA)
Duration: 2024 - 2028
Project Coordinator: Materahub

CRAFTWORK 4.0 is a Creative Europe-funded initiative that supports emerging European craft practitioners by enhancing their international visibility and promoting cross-border collaboration. The project brings together 12 organizations from across Europe to form a co-creative platform that fosters innovation, cultural exchange, and skill-sharing in contemporary craft. It also highlights the rich heritage of the Romani community and addresses challenges facing the craft sector, including reduced funding and limited educational opportunities.

Financer: Creative Europe Programme (CREA)
Duration: 2024 - 2027
Project Coordinator: FONDACIJA ZA RAZVOJ EKONOMSKE NAUKE – FREN
Project Partners: Center Rog, Fondacija Institut za kreativno preduzetnistvo i inovacije - Foundation Institute for creative entrepreneurship and innovation and Museum Sydøstdanmark

Glassmaking Tradition Meets Innovation project pioneers original tools for the green and digital transition in creative glassmaking, including a carbon footprint calculator and a catalogue of 30 circular design ideas. It empowers artists and craftsmen with sustainable methodologies, digital tools, and gamification software to rethink glass production for a zero-carbon future. By blending tradition with innovation, the project supports the creation of new business models and artworks through three Creative Glass Labs, promoting eco-conscious, digitally enhanced, and heritage-connected glass practices across Europe.