Mario Cucinella We are running a new edition of the Master’s in Sustainable Design, a Post Graduate program that we crafted by bringing together the knowledge, competencies and skills that MC A has acquired over more than twenty-five years of professional practice in the global context, with the expertise of our partners in the fields of education, industry and research. This is not a conventional postgraduate program, but rather an “Academy of Practical Work”, where we learn how to work - the primary objective for those starting their professional careers - by doing research. In recent years we have tackled emerging issues related to climate change in many countries, from China to the United Arab Emirates, India, Senegal, Zambia, - and finally Italy where the school is based - aware of a strategic challenge related to training the next generation of designers: education can no longer operate as something separate from professional practice. To prepare recent graduates to really face environmental issues that are emerging globally, it is necessary to equip them with new competencies and skills. The 2030 and 2050 roadmaps are the framework within which the next generation, stepping into the professions of architecture and design today, will operate. Designers, architects and urban planners are called on to take urgent action. We have the power to contribute to global de-carbonization, but this is by no means an easy task. In order to turn human environments into ecosystems, we need to re-define our approach and eventually re-shape our work methods; what is required is more a cultural than a technological shift. The terms ‘circular economy’, as well as ‘sustainability’, are so abused in global discourse that they are have nearly lost all meaning. How can we reinvent the terms, measure their success, and use the design tools at our disposal to transition to a circular economy? Every year we accompany a selected group of young designers along a shared path that unfolds in the awareness that it is necessary to rethink the ways we address people’s needs and we operate in the natural context; we do it by offering new cognitive and technical tools that will allow them to design products, spaces, buildings and systems capable of generating new forms of creative empathy. We undertake an intense twelve-month journey within the fields of sustainability, developing research, applying it to real projects for real clients that offer us the possibility to investigate the emerging themes of our time in an open dialogue with a broad audience of experts. SOS – School of Sustainability was shaped in an open and inclusive form: students share the facilities with the team of MC A, and those who participate in the program have access to all the opportunities for knowledge exchange withing this community, which includes consultants and office partners. We don’t address sustainability only from the designer’ perspective: we invite climatologists, journalists, sociologists, anthropologists, digital manufacturers, economists and experts from the industry to share their experience in public events that we host within our spaces. At SOS, participants establish a strong professional network that will serve as a nexus for accessing quality job opportunities, that the school encourages and facilitates. Join the SOS community and become a design leader of the Post Carbon Era!