ITI – Instituto de Tecnologias Interativas

A center of design for global change, creating socio-technical systems suited to holistic challenges.

Global changes – in climate or demographics; labor systems or capital flows; sustainable resource management or energy efficiency; memes or pandemics – are happening at a pace that could not have been anticipated a few decades ago. Our planet’s newest mass extinction is being ushered in by the very same technologies and means of production that were the crowning accomplishments and best practices of our grandparents. It is clear that many of our approaches must change swiftly and radically. Yet our habits of thinking, organizing, and living are largely configured to address the challenges and goals of prior epochs, and most of our tools still reflect and support those old habits. Our current technologies and material culture impede rather than enable our ability to live appropriately. We must mindfully design new materialities that foster inclusive, innovative, and reflective societies in a changing world.

ITI aims to step into the new millennium by developing tools, systems, and techniques better suited to address its challenges. In particular: the distribution and use of natural resources, the societal and personal use of energy, global inequality of resources and opportunities, and the relationship of production and consumption all require serious reform. Reducing inequalities and social exclusion in Europe, overcoming economic and financial crises, and tackling unemployment require new ideas, strategies, and governance structures that bring opportunities to the young and creative generations and leverage the reflective European society to position Europe as a global actor.

The long-term vision of ITI is an excellence center of human-centred design and technology for global change, aimed at identifying fresh approaches to the design of new technologies, platforms and socio-technical systems that are better suited to the global challenges of this century. Some of these challenges might be unique to Europe but others are shared by communities around the world. By projecting ITI into the future of challenge-based research we envision exploring, designing for, and at times even anticipating global critical situations and opportunities for change. Strategically placed at the intersection of the American, European and African sides of the Atlantic, ITI is poised to play a crucial role in connecting, exchanging, and contributing to the innovation across the continents with which Portugal enjoys a strong relationship. As a multi-disciplinary center combining natural and social scientists, engineers, humanists, designers, and artists, its output will be focused on the area of applied science and human-centered technology. We will develop and share methods, working proofs, and spin-offs focused on rebalancing the relationship of people and environment, production and consumption, the local and the global.