This course engages students in innovation through design, working with novel materials and processes in advanced manufacturing. The main goal is to demonstrate how design can foster systemic innovation that is aware of human needs and attentive to environmental and cultural dynamics. The course illustrates new ways of conceiving and designing materials, objects and manufacturing processes which consider the interconnection of human beings, nature, and machines. New frameworks of interdisciplinary—and even interspecies—collaborations are exemplified. The course adopts a critical perspective on materials and processes, exploring their meaning and impact on society. It will be adopted both a theoretical and empirical approach, based on lectures, literature review, case studies, group discussions, interdisciplinary workshops and design-driven experiments with advanced manufacturing technologies and processes, e.g., additive manufacturing, AI, tailoring of materials properties. Students will learn how to interpret materials and manufacturing through the lenses of design. The course will illustrate how to make qualitative and systemic innovation by design. Students will be challenged to translate their scientific and engineering knowledge into design experiments and proposals, as a way to get a deeper learning experience and understanding.