NonSiButtaViaNiente: the first exhibit design sharing platform for museums
“NonSiButtaViaNiente”, an innovative start-up and benefit company, is the first national platform for sharing and recycling museum exhibits and inventories. Inspired by the principles of circular economy
National
Italy
The project started with an experiment in Lombardy and is now expanding to northern Italy to become a nationwide project for both loans and acquisitions. Currently the entities uploading assets to the platform are from the Lombardy region, while assets can already be rented throughout Italy.
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-11-17
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): NonSiButtaViaNiente Type of organisation: Società benefit First name of representative: Fabio Last name of representative: Macchitella Gender: Male Nationality: Italy Function: Communication expert Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via Cassanese 41 Town: Segrate (MI) Postal code: 20054 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 02 9153 7360 E-mail:info@nonsibuttavianiente.it Website:https://www.nonsibuttavianiente.it/
URL:https://www.instagram.com/nonsibuttavianiente.it/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #nonsibuttavianiente #sustainablexhibit #exhibitionpollution #sharing #recycling #exhibitsostenibile #oggettidimenticati #inclusione&diversity
URL:https://www.facebook.com/nonsibuttavianiente.it/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #nonsibuttavianiente #sustainablexhibit #exhibitionpollution #sharing #recycling #exhibitsostenibile #oggettidimenticati #inclusione&diversity
“NonSiButtaViaNiente”, an innovative start-up and benefit company, is the first national platform for sharing and recycling museum exhibits and inventories. Inspired by the principles of circular economy (reuse and recycle) it re-pourposes decommissioned exhibitions and waste materials at the end of their life cycle to innovate the exhibition system, which by its nature is temporary, and therefore unfit to embrace environmental sustainability issues. Realized with the contribution of the Lombardy Region, Unioncamere Lombardia and Fondazione Cariplo, “NonSiButtaViaNiente” makes available for rental by exhibition and museum realities furniture, exhibits, sound, video and lighting systems, objects of various kinds and used materials. It also includes a range of extra services, including the recycling of exhibit waste to create recycled materials, inclusive artifacts, and sustainable exhibits. Triennale di Milano was the first partner in this operation, equipping the platform with prestigious exhibitions and hosting the exhibition-workshop “La fabbrica dei giocattoli” in June 2022. In addition to Triennale, more than 25 cultural entities have chosen to join this network devoted to sustainability, including: Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Museo Bagatti Valsecchi and Fondazione Stelline of Milan. NonSiButtaViaNiente is a system and process innovation: it transforms service into value for the cultural system. In short, it represents an observatory on sustainability and is a promoter of good design practices at the systemic level.
reduce
reuse
recycle
re-think
sustainable exhibit design
The project is exemplary in the area of sustainability issues because for the first time it introduces circular economy issues into the realm of exhibit design. The project aims to use and enhance materials that are discarded or have ended their life cycle to create new forms of “exhibit”, precisely in the discipline of exhibit design, which is often deaf and uninclined to embrace environmental sustainability issues.
The underdevelopment of fairs, museums, and events is so strong that experimentation with sharing is already present in many industries (such as construction) but does not exist in the exhibit sector, where this project is the only one that is tested and working with a TRL9. Through the implementation of sharing, the project promotes a new project culture that wants to reflect the post exhibition/event from the very beginning stages and suggests a design that is careful about economic resources so as to be more inclusive and sustainable.
The company is formed by people with strong social awareness, and was created for this purpose as a Benefit company, promoting innovation aimed at the public sector from the beginning to improve its service. The birth of the sharing/recycling platform is proposed with a free charge for basic services so as to facilitate municipalities and public entities and to promote a revolution in the sector. This revolution is based on the new opportunities given by sharing, that allow designers to be able to borrow (and even modify) goods from other exhibition spaces, so they do not necessarily have to recreate everything from scratch, reusing goods already designed for similar purposes. This model presupposes a paradifgm shift for the designers who, on one hand are asked to address the theme of exhibit with a renewed sensibility towards the theme of end of life but, on the other hand gain access to a skillful mix of aesthetic possibilities that are brought to bear by accessing a catalog of assets that pool the wealth of investment (much of it public) made over the decades.
The use of assets on the platform is also a way to fund culture (especially compared to entities such as museums and associations) that may have more reasoned costs in producing events and perhaps funding possible from the use of their assets left on the platform.
In terms of inclusion, the company founded by a group of people, who are at different levels (directly and indiriectly) dealing with disabilities issues, who therefore have a strong calling towards the theme. Therefore the platform, in addition to the basic sharing service, offers the recycling of materials from events to create objects that increase the social inclusion of exhibition spaces among the first special services.
For example, the plastics collected during the affiliated events (packaging, bottles, exhibition forex, etc.) were used to design experimental devices that enhance the accessibility of events and exhibitions, such as a service to build access ramps, a service of sensory plastics and braille signage for the visually impaired. This is a special service that is both inclusive and environmentally sustainable and seeks to turn a problem (plastics) into an opportunity (donating inclusive services).
After the start of experimentation with the Milan Triennale Museum and the launch of the platform, the project turned to civil society allowing cultural associations and third sector entities entry inside the service. Entering the platform allowed them to provide materials and goods at competitive prices and access sponsorships from the entities registered on the platform for the use of these goods during events and actions of public benefit. These actions of involvement and direct use of goods have mainly taken place inside the city of Milan, where having one of the proximity warehouses associations and entities often ask for support for their initiatives.
Another advantage that civil society actors gained from the affiliation to the platform is the increase in the possibilities of exchanging equipment even with other associations, increasing the possibilities for actions of interest to the community and the inhabitants of the neighborhoods in which they operate.
The project saw an incubation period at Cariplo Factory and then made a presentation within the Innovamusei call for proposals, eventually getting chosen by the Milan Triennale Museum to create an experiment to be tested during a 10-month period. The project later used the incubator’s expertise to fine-tune the innovative business model, using the test period with “Triennale di Milano” to test an experimentation on the theme of recycling and a reflection on rethinking the display system that resulted in the book “Non Si Butta Via Niente” (ISBN: 978-88-916-5597-4).
Since the months of testing, the experimentation has become implementation and 25 museum realities from the Lombardy region (which funded the project in the start-up phase) have entered the platform. The inclusion of the various realities required the collaboration with a variety of local authorities, in order to solve the bureaucratic problems that such a new service is going to create with respect to the current legislation.
Currently, the platform has opened access to associations first, then professionals and lastly companies so as to create the correct ecosystem to allow the platform to work at its best. The model, which has been active throughout Italy since its inception, is extending the acquisition of assets outside the Lombardy region in recent months and is hypothesizing to export the model to Europe. The European scale-up will be instructed now by applying to the horizon and creative calls, also assuming the creation of a system of certification and determination of the econological footprint of the actions within the platform (compared to the standard systems normally used).
The start-up’s nature is rooted in interdiscplinarity, all the wayto the composition of the team, which sports:
- an expert in exhibition design (university professor, with experience in museum management)
- an expert in curatorial issues (with experience in large foundations and major events, such as Expo)
- an expert on insurance issues (so as to preside over these aspects related to the assets on the platform)
- an expert on managent issues (to oversee the various processes and institutional bureaucratic aspects)
- an expert on field marketing and logistics aspects
The team that had to mix skills in order to deal with organizational and bureaucratic issues first, and then had to start with cultural awareness actions for the new possibilities introduced by such a tool. The project, in its simplicity, had to devise a variety of ways of collaboration to enable cultural actors present in many legal forms to be able to use the service.
Thus, interactions occurred in areas and phases:
- A first strong interaction was set between the design and technical and bureaucratic needs, sprouting a synergy between the world of design and the world of legal management and insurance, that allowed the project to get started.
- second phase saw the interaction between the design and research needs of users and the design of the portal carried forward together with web design and user eexperience experts.
- the third phase was the upload of the assets on the platform, followed by a phase alphabetization of museums, exhibition spaces, and foundations in the use of the platform tools, and int the correct compilation of the technical specifications necessary to guarantee an actual reuse of the assets by others
- the fourth phase was the testing of the plastform by designers and users, with collection of feedback and fine-tuning to the platform
- the fifth phase saw the collaboration of projects, curators, and institutions to be able to implement special services.
during the 10 months of experimentation, the project succeeded in:
- Shaping a contractual mode able to overcome the bureaucratic limitations in the way of the service introduced by the platform (together with the municipality, public and private Foundations, third sector associations and entities, and companies)
- Creating agreements and include inside the platformas many as 25 museums and exhibition institutions, inlcuding “La Triennale di Milano” (with which it started) but
- Including 13000 pieces and assets in the platform
- collecting 1600000 € worth of assets
- The creation of a new tool for the realities of exhibit design and a new way of working for designers, with the first publication that begins to think about these issues diffusing a new design sensibility.
Direct benefits are given by the money that the platform gives to the entities that upload the goods at the time of use of the asset (which until now was only a cost or a possible problem) and by the possibility to exchange and organize cultural events and actions at a lower cost and with a reduced ecological impact (at least 85%.)
by tradition, exhibit design is a temporary discipline, whose primary function is to amplify narratives related to the event being exhibited. To do this it seeks the most engaging and spectacular solution at the lower costs, because everything that will be done will have a very limited duration.
Starting from this assumption in the development of the market (and the discipline) we have two possible answers: “tailor-made” projects and “standard” projects (or parts of projects) that use pre-equipped systems, usually rented from private services.
“Non Si Butta Via Niente” takes the principles of circular economy and creates the first “semi-public”-natured service, by giving access to the goods that have normally already been purchased for the various events by the many exhibition facilities (so as to create a virtuous alternative to the market of normal services, virtuous because the use of this platform finances the cultural realities enrolled) and introduces the theme of “post-exhibit” in the culture of exhibit design, by looking for possible answers to lower the ecological footprint of cultural actions. The resulting platform, and the shift in design culture it brings about, can be considered one of the first responses to the demands for more environmental awareness in the cultural sector on the market
The project thus iso ne of the first adressing the deafness of the exhibit sector is such that for some cities with a high rate of events such as Milan, Venice, Florence and Turin in Italy but also Paris, Berlin, Madrid or London on a European scale, one can really speak of “exhibition pollution”.
The approach used revolves around the principles of circular economy and repurposes them in the theme of exhibit design:
- REDUCE by reducing the use of new items when not needed
- REUSE by reusing old materials and objects for new events
- RECYCLE by recycling materials in short supply chains to make them a resource immediately
- RE-THINK by rethinking the exhibiting system to use new platform tools
Re-think there is about raising awareness and building flexible solutions that can make a good use of the wealth of assets that the platform has finally made available to all. In this new model it will be important to consider solutions in a systemic way, so as to keep in mind the environmental impacts of transportation, addressed by the platform by a user experience tha helps choosing the most sustainable solutions, by ordinating search results in order of sustainability
The project was born with the idea of scalability and replicability of the model. A global model that is based on a network of networked local realities so as to give widespread responses and possibly suggesting the most sustainable solution for the same response.
The idea of the project is to build and test the model in the completed experimentation and then make the model usable on a national scale and try to export it so it can be adapted to the various realities of the European community. The project is in the process of applying with an international network in the funding lines proposed by the European Commission.
The project addresses the global challenge of the negative impact of the exhibit design sector by providing the tools for a shift in the way the exhibition and event sector operates. The shift based on the experimentations born from the use of the platform to spread solutions and new way of working, that aims at improving in the quality of life at the local scale and providing the possibility to improve local cultural services, both a raising economic resources and allowing for practices that are more sustainable and environmentally aware.
