THE SYSTEMIC APPROACH APPLIED IN/OUTSIDE THE ONE'S OWN CONTEXT Analysis of two main production areas: wine in Basso Monferrato, Piedmont, Italy and green tea in Uji area, Kansai, Japan. A strategy for enhancing the cultural landscape through local production systems.

The following study is the result of one year of work started in January 2019 with the involvement in the Drinkscape investigation program organised by the Polytechnic University of Turin and the Kyoto Institute of Technology. Yubune village in Uji area of Japan and Cella Monte municipality in Basso Monferrato in Italy are the two selected areas the thesis focused on. Both sites are included in two different territorial development programs, "A Walk through the 800-year history of Japanese Tea" by Japan Heritage and the "Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato" by UNESCO Cultural Heritage. The two main supply chains, green tea in Uji and wine in Basso Monferrato, identify the cultural landscape from the productive, social and cultural point of view. Within this thesis, the systemic design approach has been applied in/outside the context taken into account: in Japan, as an outsider and foreign designer, and in Italy, as an insider and native designer. One of the research purposes is to understand and identify differences and similarities about the application of the systemic approach in a foreign country and a native one. The reason why the exchange program at Nagoya City University, in Japan, was crucial is that it allowed us to continue to investigate the topic and work on the thesis for five months. Indeed, living in a foreign country gives a precious opportunity to discover and explore the territory while having a different cultural perspective. In particular, the holistic diagnosis has been developed in two different ways: - For the wine sector, the HD was carried on with the ordinary way. The desk research started in Italy, continued in Japan and, was followed by the field research, according to the standard method. - For the tea sector, the methodology was overturned, by experimenting the field research firstly in Japan, as outsiders, and then by carrying out the desk research. The following methodological questions guided the HD steps to identify some useful critical points suitable for future scenarios: 1) Is it necessary to be a native of the analysed place? 2) What are the tools and who are the actors that could be involved by the foreign designer? 3) What kind of difficulties may the designer have to face? 4) What are the strengths in analysing a territory from an external point of view? 5) How is it possible to involve a company in a design participatory process? The research answers these questions providing a designed strategy, customized and fitting with the cultural landscapes. The strategy proposes to enhance the cultural landscapes through the spread and application of the systemic design methodology to the main supply chains which identify them. Finally, the result of the thesis is a set of meta-design proposals come from the strategy, fitted on the peculiarities of Yubune and Cella Monte cultural landscapes.