AGATHÓN | International Journal of Architecture, Art and Design

Volume 19 of AGATHÓN continues the trajectory initiated in previous issues devoted to the 2030 Agenda, focusing on two Sustainable Development Goals that operate as structuring mechanisms of the transition: Industry, Innovation, Infrastructure (SDG 9), and Reduce Inequalities (SDG 10). These two themes form part of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted in September 2015 by the Member States of the United Nations (UN, 2015), and promoted as a call for urgent action capable of combining prosperity, equitable development, and protection of the planet, while enhancing cooperation among countries, national governments, local administrations, public institutions, private enterprises, civil society, and individuals. Only a few years before the deadline set for their achievement, however, this call requires the scientific community to undertake a reflection that can no longer be postponed: how far we have progressed, which trajectories we are following, and what margins for transformation remain viable. An assessment of progress based on comparable data has been proposed by the Global Sustainable Development Report (IGS, 2023), which has stressed the need for a substantial correction and acceleration of implementation policies. Without these, humanity will face prolonged periods of crisis and uncertainty, with the risk of further undermining both the principle of ‘leaving no one behind’ and the safeguarding of ecosystems. While the 2019 Report still recorded uneven advances that were partly consistent with the expected trajectories, the picture outlined by the 2023 Report is more critical: on some Goals, progress has not accelerated sufficiently, while on others – food security, climate action, and biodiversity protection – the world continues to move in a direction that is not compatible with sustainability.

On the basis of these reflections, Volume 19 of AGATHÓN brings together research contributions, experiments, and critical reflections situated within the fields of Landscape, Urban Planning, Architectural and Urban Design, Engineering, Architectural Technology, Design, and Recovery with the intention of fostering an open debate on the theme ‘Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure (SDG 9), Reduce Inequalities (SDG 10) | Projects, research, synergies, trade-offs’. The published contributions adopt a multidisciplinary and multiscalar approach, addressing process issues, methodologies, ex ante and ex post evaluation models, the overcoming of limits, gaps, and barriers, the enhancement of synergies, and the containment of trade-offs with the other Goals. The editorial that follows aims to convey this complexity through a sequence of scales: from the theoretical, cognitive, and relational infrastructures of innovation to landscape and territorial systems; from cities and settlements to the building; from the envelope to supply chains; and from objects and interfaces to surface and matter. The aim is not to describe the contributions as isolated cases, but to recognise within them transferable instruments for accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, making explicit the conditions, benefits, and trade-offs that every design action entails.

The articles published in volume 19 therefore confirm the need to understand design as a critical infrastructure of the transition: an instrument able to connect knowledge and action, evaluation and decision, and innovation and spatial justice. The impact of the contributions should not be sought in any claim to offer definitive solutions, but in their capacity to provide languages, methods, and criteria with which to orient more informed choices. Acting at different scales with multiscalar effects means accepting that every intervention, even a minimal one, participates in broader systems of resources, rights, competences, and responsibilities. On the basis of this awareness that the design disciplines can contribute to the 2030 Agenda as a place of scientific, cultural, and operational mediation, in which innovation becomes credible when it reduces gaps, strengthens capacities, and makes the transformation of the built environment more equitable. The framework that emerges is not exhaustive, however, and precisely for this reason retains open scientific significance: many experiments require long-term verification, more robust databases, broader international comparisons, and ex post evaluations capable of measuring not only declared performances, but also actual effects on communities, users, workers, and territories. Some contributions clearly show that innovation itself can generate inclusion or new inequalities: digital tools and information passports can enable circularity, but also accentuate competence divides; nature-based solutions can reduce emissions, but also displace criticalities onto supply chains; urban and territorial regeneration can produce public value or feed extractive processes; and monitoring devices and artificial intelligence can support learning and safety or introduce forms of surveillance. The maturity of the published contributions lies in not concealing these tensions and in making them part of the design argument.

Seen in this way, the volume offers useful indications for scientific communities, designers, public administrations, companies, heritage and infrastructure managers, education and training institutions, and third-sector actors. For researchers, it provides analytical frameworks to make synergies and trade-offs among Goals more verifiable; for designers, it suggests criteria for integrating environmental performance, accessibility, usability, maintenance, and social quality; for public decision-makers, it indicates the need to move from episodic interventions to programmes capable of combining data, governance, economic resources, and responsibility over time; and for companies and supply chains, it proposes a reading of innovation not limited to efficiency, but extended to traceability, durability, circularity, and the distribution of benefits. From this perspective, the contributions advance the debate on themes central to the design disciplines: infrastructures as systems of equity, the digital transition as a question of access and control, regeneration as a long-term process, materials as nodes in social and environmental supply chains, and technologies as devices to be governed rather than merely applied. Taken together, the contributions collected in the volume show that design action oriented towards SDG 9 and SDG 10 cannot be confined to a single scale or a single disciplinary field. Innovation becomes relevant when it produces measurable and recognisable effects at different scales: a decision on carbon or soil modifies planning priorities; the reuse of a building can influence territorial economies and care networks; a façade, a component, or a material can orient supply chains, maintenance, and life cycles; and an interface or learning environment can redefine accessibility, safety, and user responsibilities. The value of the volume lies precisely in this multiscalar reading through a set of conceptual devices, methods, prototypes, and evaluative tools that help us understand how specific decisions can generate systemic repercussions and how general strategies require operational verification in places, buildings, products, and materials.