Product Innovation In Sustainable Design: Internal Partition System For Improving Indoor Well-Being

The authors was designed and developed a subsystem of vertical interior partitions for renovations and new constructions, ensuring the adaptability of spaces to changing user needs, as part of the PON doctoral research project entitled “Health, Environment, and Architecture. Materials and Components for Product Innovation in Sustainable Design”. It consists in a prefabricated and modular subsystem designed to create, acccording to the Circular Economy, bio- and eco-friendly partitions that can be quickly assembled and disassembled, with high levels of recyclability and reusability, based on the principles of Life Cycle Thinking and Design for Disassembly. These prerogatives were complemented by the goal of using materials that naturally improve living comfort, starting from a previous environmental impact assessment conducted by the authors on hemp-based products: a raw material capable of creating an environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable system, realizing local development prospects and responding to the development and well-being needs of humanity and the planet. Therefore, a prefabricated system was developed to be constructed by assembling hemp panels on wooden grids. The new system's development was divided into four phases: design, off-site production, on-site assembly, and on-site disassembly, which led to the creation of the system's prototyping drawings. The work process followed the steps of the Bill of Materials, analyzing materials, system subcomponents, and their quantities, as well as assembly anchoring systems, concluding with the identification of disposal scenarios. Finally, the design process led to the development of a technology that represents an evolution of traditional systems already in use. The goal was to create a set of elements that are easy to transport and assemble (design of a kit ready for on-site assembly), highly versatile in construction (modular system), and easily disassembled, reusable, and/or recyclable.