The paper aims to illustrate the innovative aspects of the training courses on the themes of Eco-oriented Technological Design and Environmental Design developed by the authors as part of the Design and Communication Degree Programme and the Master's course of study in Design for Innovation of the Department of Architecture and Industrial Design of the Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”.

Both teaching experiences start from the premise of providing students with the methodological tools to manage the design process of systems that can support the city in responding to the changing challenges to which it is subjected.

Furthermore, the disciplinary contents of the teachings are oriented to make students aware from the design point of view of the technologies that guarantee the achievement of the objective of improving the quality of the environment with increasingly higher standards.

In particular, the teaching of Eco-Oriented Technological Design intends to transfer to students knowledge and methods oriented to develop both creative, executive, implementation and performance control skills for outdoor space objects, with identification of both insertion in the context of the built environment and landscape and reliability and dependability at the scale of detail.

The teaching of Environmental design, placed within the Product Eco-design curricula, aims to provide students with evolved methods and tools useful for the achievement of eco-design, which takes into account the environmental impact in the conception and development of products from their conception in order to control their environmental performance throughout their life cycle.

All this in order to detect and highlight any environmental advantages and problems and provide decision-making guidelines for product designers. The theoretical approach is accompanied by the teaching of practical methods for the development of the eco-sustainable project.

For both teachings, moreover, technical awareness is pursued through the acquisition of information and knowledge that is applied to specific contexts with the goal of eco-oriented redevelopment of urban open spaces. As part of the teachings, moreover, a design intervention hypothesis is addressed, for which the course provides input through both focused lectures and an operational workshop. In fact, students, applying the theoretical concepts presented during the lectures are invited to develop a design proposal.

This proposal, sharing the design methodologies proper to technological and environmental design, must respond to a design brief whose main objective is to insert within a specific urban context systems and products (in relation to the course of study) capable of activating functional and environmental improvement actions at the small scale.

Finally, the teaching experiences conducted allow the authors to highlight the teaching approach that is strongly focused on sustainability and on the relationship between design choices and the technological-environmental characteristics of the areas of intervention.

Keywords: Environmental challenges, technological performance, urban context, small scale.