Gabriele Tempesta is a design consultant, expert in sustainable design, communicator, and alumnus of the Politecnico di Milano, where he is currently a PhD candidate and research fellow at the Department of Design, within the LeNSlab Polimi — a research group dedicated to advancing and disseminating design and system innovation for sustainability through university education and applied research projects with companies.

After obtaining a Master’s degree in Industrial Design from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), he worked for ten years in China as a design consultant, applying sustainable and human-centered design approaches across various sectors — from urban furniture and public space design, to social innovation projects for NGOs and scenario development, as well as corporate training in design thinking and workshops focused on sustainable behaviors and business models.

His research activity combines professional experience and academic inquiry, exploring how design researchers can leverage academic consultancies to facilitate the adoption of sustainable design practices within organisations.

He was among the first to promote sustainable design in China beyond the academic sphere, gradually building solid experience as a lecturer and speaker. Since 2015, he has delivered more than 40 talks at conferences, companies, and universities — including Tongji University, Jiangnan University, Shanghai Design Week, and Beijing Design Week — on topics related to environmental sustainability and social innovation in design. His most recent teaching activities include contributing, as lecturer, to the sprint MOOC “Ecodesign: designing products with a low environmental impact” within the Libreria Zero series of the Politecnico di Milano, and to the module “Sustainable Product-Service System and Distributed Economies Design” within POLI.design’s “Design for Sustainability and Regeneration” course.