Contemporary design must cope with the need to save resources and reduce soil consumption, answering at the same time to a widespread demand of heritage preservation. Its scope has therefore shifted from the probing of an utopian future to the interpretation of the past. The recent import within the architectural debate of the re-cycle concept and procedures promises to keep together the exigencies of environmental, economic and social sustainability with a renovated experimental momentum, both pragmatic and radical. The surprising potential of re-cycle as a design tool has been explored in a workshop held in Gorizia, which involved the student of the University of Trieste. Thoughts and projects produced in this intensive seminar show how widecan be the range of its application, from object to landscape, from matter to ideas, from interiors to urban spaces.