The Designesart Collection was created as part of the master’s program in Furniture and Interior Design at the Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco’s Escola Superior de Artes Aplicadas, Portugal. It is a product series that values inherent Beira Baixa’s territory and identity through its material, environment, society, symbols, and cultural heritage. How does Design embody value to this production? How is their geographic identity process? This paper explores the nature of designs or designing by understanding how it is influenced by aspects of territory, culture, and local materials and techniques. It answers both research questions through theoretical tools: identity and territorial process literature review, objects produced selection and analyses, and data articulation with theories and techniques. Therefore, we explain the importance of the relationship between Design and a local culture. The applied design method inverts the dynamics from global to local, paying attention to fundamental issues concerning the territories’ ecological and social concerns. The nine artifacts studied preserve and rehabilitate forgotten materials and techniques from the past, transmitted from generation to generation. Local identity and territory are central in the Design current panorama as a sustainable model of material culture and revitalization of a place history, transporting memories to the world through new objects.

Keywords - Geography and Identity in Design, Local Culture, Ecodesign, Sustainable Manufacturing

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