“Ideas in action" was organized by Beatrice Leanza and is one of the four sections of the exhibition. It groups a series of multidisciplinary projects that mix practical and conceptual strategies with new production methods and diffusion of design.

It aims to provide a critical overview on the new models of integrated design, in which the blend of artisan thinking, digital knowledge and co-design are the common denominators of the numerous and varied designs on display.

The Other Design is a broad-reaching and ambitious project, envisaged and developed by the Milanese research center and Fab Lab. Instead of producing a single article, that is exactly the same for everyone, designed for the manufacturing procedures as opposed to the people who use them, the creatives channel their efforts into locally-made, unique items, designed to satisfy the individual needs of each user. In other words, another different design materializes. The design method can be described as inclusive, with the designs released through the open sources to encourage their diffusion and increase their social impact. Collaboration between designers and end-users is incentivized, digital manufacturing technology is exploited to the full and the items are produced directly in the Fab Labs.

The projects on display in Shanghai all originate from different Italian realities; Opendot grouped them together for the first time at the 2015 International Furniture Salon in Milan: the items of Hackability – an initiative of co-design between the makers and the disabled end-users that was held in Turin at the beginning of 2015; the projects of +LAB, Fabrizio Alessio, Stefano Perabò and Ciro Borriello, Francesco Rodighiero, Avril,design and the Workshop of Physical Computing at the Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano.